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THE NEW WEST 



AS RELATED TO THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE. 



BY 

E. P. TENNEY. 



Third Edition, Illustrated. 




CAMBRIDGE: 

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1878. 






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NOTE. 

A gentleman from an inland town in Massachusetts, — toko has no pecu- 
niary interest in the Far West, save that he has made most generous gifts to 
promote Christian education in that region,- — has so far home the expense of 
this publication in its different editions, as to provide for the free distribution 
of a limited number of copies, to persons who are wont to devise liberal things 
in establishing the foundations of intelligence and morality in new countries. 

The author takes this occasion to express his thanks to the press for the warm 
qreeting given this monograph. To meet the demand of those ivho desire infor- 
mation concerning the climate, resources, and scenery of the New West, a few 
copies have been placed upon sale at the bookstores, — copies in cloth, at fifty 
cents ; in paper, twenty-five. 

Congregational House, Boston. 
April 19, 1378. 




THE NEW WEST. 



Between the valley of the Mississippi — the Old West 
— and the Pacific slope lies the New West, a mountain 
plateau from three to six thousand feet high, upon which 
rise the Rocky Mountains. Take Wyoming, Colorado, 
New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, and Mon- 
tana ; then add a minute fragment of fifty thousand 
square miles from western Dakota, comprising the 
Black Hills region, and you have the New West, — 
one third part of the United States, — as large as all 
that portion of our country east of the Mississippi. 
Colorado is equal in size to Switzerland, New England, 
New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. Maps of Penn- 
sylvania and New York would need to add Maryland 
and Rhode Island to cover Colorado. Ohio could lie 
down twice within the boundaries of the Centennial 



4 THE NEW WEST. 

State, and then leave room enough for West Virginia 
and Connecticut. Kansas and Iowa together are not 
its match in square miles. Colorado has almost as 
many acres as Old England and New. Men team 
goods from Colorado Springs through Ute Pass, follow- 
ing a longer road than that from Boston to Philadel- 
phia, and yet they do not go out of their own State. 

The topography of the New West may be in general 
described thus : — 

The valley of the Mississippi extends four hundred 
and fifty miles west of the river ; we then cross the 
elevated buffalo plains, seven hundred miles long and 
three hundred miles in width ; then the Rocky Moun- 
tains, — in parallel ranges from twelve thousand to four- 
teen thousand feet high, inclosing parks at an eleva- 
tion of eight or nine thousand feet, — three hundred 
and fifty miles wide ; then a width of seven hundred 
miles to the Sierra Nevada. The Great American Des- 
ert is upon the western verge of the last described belt. 
It is from seventy-five to two hundred and fifty miles 
wide. No east and west line can cross arable land all 
the way from the Rocky Mountains to the Sierra. 1 

Men who forecast the future of America will be in- 
terested in a statement of those elements of wealth, 
which indicate the capacity of this mountain plateau to 
sustain population. 

Aside from Idaho, no small portion of which is, like 
Oregon, admirably adapted to sustain a large agricul- 
tural population, the New West resembles California in 
its general characteristics. 

One of the prime industries, when it is fully devel- 
oped, will be grazing. In the northern portion of this 
region it is necessary to make some provision for win- 
ter, — even so far south as Colorado Springs ; but beef- 

1 Vide AVheeler's Preliminary Report on Nevada, etc. 



THE NEW WEST. 5 

cattle and sheep graze all the year round without cut 
feed or shelter in southern Colorado, New Mexico, and 
Arizona. The pasture grounds of Colorado and New 
Mexico comprise seventy million acres. 

The grama grass is so nutritious that stock and dairy 
men who have had many years experience in the val- 
ley of the Mississippi and also on the great plains, are 
now mo vino; to the New West. Not far from ten mil- 
lion dollars are now invested in stock in Colorado, a 
part being European capital. The profit is estimated 
at about fifty per cent, where the business is under- 
stood. It is an interest of more promise than all the 
gold mines in the country. In the future, when the 
slopes of both oceans are crowded, and the valley of 
the Mississippi is a garden, the great herding ground 
of the continent will be on the plains of our New West. 
The present value of the hay crop and pasturage of 
the United States — including dairy products, wool, 
and the increase of live stock, — is nine hundred and 
seventy-three million dollars, which exceeds in value 
all the cotton, corn, wheat, and other farm products of 
the country. 1 As an element of national wealth, these 
vast pastures, which have fed the buffaloes for ages, are 
likely to contribute quite as much to the country as 
any other equal area not occupied by a manufacturing, 
mining,' or commercial population. Those who know 
the manner of life most frequently led by herdsmen 
will fear for the future, unless the youth who are to 
eiwao;e in this business are trained in Christian schools. 
An enlightened patriotism will plant the Christian col- 
lege in the New West, and, through its manifold influ- 
ences, elevate all the people. 

Agricultural operations in this region promise to be 
very profitable. Portions of Colorado and New Mexico, 

1 Stewart's Irrigation, page 18. 



6 THE NEW WEST. 

to the amount of four million acres, are watered by 
rains, and the same is true of no small areas, here and 
there, in the mountains or near them, throughout the 
New West. But, in the main, irrigation is necessary, 
and the farms are planted on the borders of mountain 
streams fed by melting snow. The absence of a green- 
sward upon the general face of the country is at once 
missed by the eastern eye, but a practical farmer soon 
learns that there is everyway an advantage if he can 
water his crops when he chooses. The crops are not 
injured by rain or its withholding. Drought spoils one 
fourth of the crops of the world. Farming carried on 
by irrigation is much more profitable than in the ordi- 
nary process, and the land is kept in good heart by it 
through centuries. 1 Chemical analysis of the soil of 
the New West shows that it is of a remarkably good 

1 See Stewart's valuable woi'k on irrigation, which is a standard author- 
ity. A foot of water is needed over the whole soil while the crops are 
growing. Three fourths of our rain-fall runs off or conies at the wrong 
time of year for crops. The English derive more advantage from less 
rain-fall than we have, because it comes a little at a time during the season 
when it is most needed. American farmers, east and west, raise less per 
acre than they would by partial irrigation. The average crop all over the 
country might be largely increased by the systematic distribution of water 
from streams. Market gardening often suffers for want of water at a 
critical time. " Growing plants contain from seventy to ninety-five per 

cent, of water The solid portion of the plant consists of matters 

which enter into it only while in solution in water No water, whether 

it be in the state of liquid or vapor, can'enter into any other part of a plant 

than its roots The summer rain-fall in our climate is rarely, if ever, 

adequate to the requirements of what would be a maximum crop, consistent 
with the probabilities of the soil." [Stewart, page 9.] Water, when used 
in irrigation, " brings within reach of the plants a largely increased amount 
of nutriment. Water is the universal solvent. No water in its natural con- 
dition is pure. The water of springs and streams holds in solution or 
suspension a quantity of mineral and gaseous matters, that possess high 
fertilizing value." [Page 18.] Irrigation has been used on the same soil 
two hundred years in New Mexico, without other fertilizing properties 
than that brought by the water. 

The British government has recently expended seventy million dollars in 
irrigating; works in India. 



THE NEW WEST. 1 

quality, needing only the touch of water to produce 
the best crops in the country, notably of wheat. The 
wheat crop of the United States averages twelve bush- 
els to the acre, California twenty, Colorado twenty- 
eight. It will, on this account, support a large popu- 
lation in proportion to the surface cultivated. In 
estimating the agricultural resources of this region, the 
area of farming land may be, in respect to ability to 
support population, doubled or nearly so on account of 
the advantages of a good soil under irrigation. It will 
also support a larger population than the same land 
east, since it can be used mainly to raise vegetable food 
for man. In the eastern States a farmer must set apart 
acres to raise hay and cattle to keep the rest of his 
farm in good condition ; and in the valley of the Mis- 
sissippi hay must be raised to keep cattle through the 
winter ; in general, neither of these necessities exists 
in the New West. The whole area of farm lands can 
be used for man's garden or granary. This considera- 
tion alone would be equal to adding, perhaps, one third 
to the amount of arable land in the New West. While, 
therefore, that which can be irrigated is little compared 
with the whole surface, it is practically enough to sup- 
port a vast population. It is estimated that Colorado 
and New Mexico have agricultural resources to main- 
tain ten million inhabitants. Professor Hayden's " At- 
las of Colorado," soon to be issued, will show a much 
greater area of farm land than has been supposed to 
exist. Western and northwestern mountain valleys will 
prove veiy attractive. 

Farming- in Colorado is at this time a decided success. 
There will be always a good market for garden and 
field produce among the mining and grazing people, 
on account of the limited area suitable for cultivation 
and the distance from competition. The farm lands 



8 THE NEW WES T. 

will, therefore, have a comparatively dense population 
at some future time. The rich Arkansas valley and 
the banks of rivers fed by the mountains, now com- 
paratively desolate, will resound with the voices of chil- 
dren ; and happy homes will be scattered along the 
borders of all streams. And the Gospel message will 
need to be borne to every door by a ministry trained 
upon neighboring soil and adapted to the field. The 
planting of Christian teachers in every school district 
can be secured only by establishing first the Christian 
college ; from which intellectual and spiritual quicken- 
ing will flow like the fertilizing streams from the Sierra 
Madre. 

This region has a considerable quantity of timber in 
the mountains, enough for the use of the country. 
The river bottoms are lined with scrub-oak, box-elder, 
and cottonwood. There are five million acres of tim- 
ber land in New Mexico, nearly one fifth of the terri- 
tory. There is, however, no such variety of growth as 
one sees in the East. 

Inexhaustible store of excellent iron ore is found in 
southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. Near 
the iron, is the best coal west of Pennsylvania. For 
coking, it is pronounced by experts to be equal to the 
Connellsville coal. Furnaces and rolling mills will 
abound in this region in the future, they are already 
established at Pueblo. That this industry will be de- 
veloped rapidly, and that to a great extent, is certain, 
since there is no coal for four hundred miles east, no 
good coal in Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, or California. 
The coal is now sent to Nevada for smelting. If the 
higher education is to find a foothold iii the New 
West, Colorado College is well located, in proximity to 
this coal and iron region. 

It is hardly needful to speak of the gold and silver 



THE NEW WEST. 9 

mines, whose fame has gone out to all the world. One 
hundred millions of gold have been sent from Montana 
alone. The annual yield of Colorado is eight millions, 
which is more than California produced in 1870. Gil- 
pin County has averaged two millions a year for eight- 
een years. The passion for mining is the instrument 
of Providence in transferring populations to new seats 
of empire. The history of California and Australia is 
now repeating itself in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, 
Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, — the rich- 
est reoion in the world. 

The climate will, however, do more than all other 
agencies towards settling the New West. " The em- 
pire of climate," says Montesquieu, "is the most pow- 
erful of all empires." West of the valley of the Miss- 
issippi the land rises, sloping like a wide roof toward 
the Rocky ridgepole of the continent ; so that this part 
of the country is too high and dry for malarial diseases, 
asthma, bronchitis, or consumption. Consumption may 
be prevented by moving to Colorado ; those who go 
with quick consumption fixed upon them find that the 
disease is accelerated by the rarity of the atmosphere ; 
but chronic consumption is cured by the climate. Col- 
orado soil and air are so dry that an axe left out of 
doors will not rust, if it be covered from snow and rain. 
Save in. the mountains and in their near neighbor- 
hood, there is very little snow and a general absence 
of rain. Warm currents from the South Pacific touch 
the mountains, modifying the air. I have seen men 
plowing in February eight thousand feet above the 
sea near Central. In the vicinity of Colorado Springs 
sheep graze all winter, six thousand feet above the sea, 
in the latitude of Washington. Parties have indulged 
in picnics out of doors upon a given day each week for 
ten weeks of December, January, and February. A 
weather record of two years at Colorado Springs gives, 



10 THE NEW WEST. 

— in one year three hundred and twenty-two fair and 
clear days, and forty-four cloudy ; the year following, 
three hundred and twelve fair and clear, and fifty-three 
cloudy. Colorado College is now one of the govern- 
ment stations for meteorological observations. The 
daily record by Professor Loud indicates conditions of 
climate, which will attract invalids to this spot. 

It is not, perhaps, needful to say that persons in deli- 
cate health, who are subject to an embargo of mud 
every winter in the States in the valley of the Missis- 
sippi, will find in Colorado the best natural roads in the 
world, which offer good driving or walking, so that 
they can take advantage of the almost unceasing sun- 
shine. The climate is by no means perfect, it being 
subject to the changes incident to a mountain altitude ; 
but, with all its " exceptional " freaks, it is so much 
superior to the climate of the East or that of the Old 
West, that persons in ill health can live out of doors to 
an extent altogether unknown in regions where cloud, 
snow, rain, wind, sharp and severe changes of weather, 
kill tens of thousands of semi-invalids every year. The 
lives of multitudes might be easily lengthened by mov- 
ing into the New West. 

One third of the population of Colorado are recon- 
structed invalids. Asthmatic conventions meet in this 
favored country to invite all America to breathe the 
healing atmosphere. Tough, rugged people — who 
coughed ten years in the East — are now calling on all 
dwellers in fog banks and low lands to move to this 
mountain plateau. The whole New West is a sanita- 
rium ; the northern part mild in winter, and the south- 
ern part cool in summer. Montana and Wyoming are 
milder than regions in the same latitude in the lower 
altitude of the valley of the Mississippi, or on the 
Atlantic slope. That portion of Colorado south of 
the Divide is more favorable for winter residence than 



THE NEW WEST. 13 

north of it. The great storm in March of this year did 
not block the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway, 
while the Kansas Pacific and Union Pacific were buried. 
Colorado Springs had little snow, although the regions 
east and north were heavily drifted. The winter pre- 
ceding favored sleigh-riding in Denver, but there was 
no snow to speak of in Colorado Springs. There 
is always less snow fall in the southern portion of the 
State, and the changes of weather are less severe. 
New Mexico will be still better, when the country is 
better able to receive invalids. Families with the 
seeds of early death in them will do well to fly for 
refuge to these central mountain regions of America. 
The invalids of the United States comprise not a small 
part of the population ; and many of those who have 
property will, as they become acquainted with the 
facts, move into one of the beautiful towns at the east- 
ern base of the Rocky Mountains. 

The scenery is unique. The length of the main 
range of mountains and the spurs of the main range 
within the limits of Colorado is twelve hundred miles, 
averaging twelve thousand feet high ; nearly a score of 
peaks rise to a height of more than fourteen thousand 
feet. The White Hills of New England, set down in 
one of the parks, would make no great addition to the 
scenery.- Switzerland, so far as size is concerned, could 
be placed in a pocket of Colorado. 

Under the shadows of the Sierra Madre are already 
growing up some of the most home-like and attractive 
towns in America, well watered and shaded, with 
comely houses standing amid grass plots and flower 
gardens. Colorado Springs has a population of thirty- 
five hundred people, upon a spot where antelopes were 
feeding six years ago, and where the Indians were tak- 
ing scalps only a little before that. This town has 
twenty-one miles of trees, upon streets a hundred feet 



14 THE NEW WEST. 

wide, or avenues of one hundred and forty. Four rows 
of trees upon one street extend two miles. A school 
building costing twenty thousand dollars, and comfort- 
able houses of worship, indicate the character of the 
people. This colony and the one at Greeley, are the 
only ones in the State where liquor selling is forbidden 
in every deed of land, and in the policy of the local 
government. Pike's Peak rises not far off, and smaller 
mountains plant their feet within a mile or two of the 
town. The unsurpassed wonders of Glen Eyrie, Queen's 
Canon, the Garden of the Gods, Manitou Mineral 
Springs, Ute Pass, and Cheyenne 1 Canon — all within 
five miles of the town — attract tourists from all the 
world. Any one of these famous resorts would make 
the fortune of a watering place in the east. Professor 
Hayden says that he never saw so wonderful a com- 
bination of grand scenery in the neighborhood of any 
other medical springs. 2 The rocky spires and changing 
shadows of Cheyenne Mountain, seen four miles to 
the southwest of the town, give constant delight to 
every eye. It is not far to walk or ride into quiet 
glens, with flowing fountains, rocky streams, abundant 
foliage, and flowers, with mountain walls and massive 
peaks rising on every side. 

May we not anticipate an honorable future for a lit- 
erary institution, established as a fountain of Christian 
influence and intellectual power, in this enchanting 
spot ? " Most earnestly I believe," says a writer whose 
eyes are never weary in beholding the forms of these 
mountains, and whose fame is known to all literature, 
" that there is to be born of these plains and moun- 
tains, all along the great central plateaus of our con- 

1 The orthography of this word, rendered so differently by various scien- 
tific explorers, is now practically settled by the usage of a writer whose 
books have the authority of classics wherever the English tongue is spoken, 

2 Preliminary Field Report, p. 45. 



THE NEW WEST. 15 

tinent, the very best life, physical and mental, of the 
coming centuries." 

The population of the New West is, probably, at this 
time, not far from seven hundred thousand, — 

" The first low wash of waves, where soon 
Shall roll the human sea." 

In the ten years before the last census the seven 
States east of this region, having twice the area of Col- 
01 ado and New Mexico, increased their population by 
three millions. Emigration will soon occupy by hun- 
dreds of thousands, and then by millions, the eastern 
border of the New West. The laws which govern the 
westward movement of population are now well un- 
derstood. Not many years can pass before the ter- 
ritories will become States. Whenever the Indian 
difficulties, which have stood in the way of settlement, 
are completely adjusted, homes on this upland plateau 
will be sought for with the same eagerness that has 
characterized our westward bound population through- 
out American history. The Indian question is so far 
settled in Colorado that there is now no more danger 
from red men than there is in Massachusetts or New 
York. Colorado is, therefore, now increasing rapidly 
in population. 

It is not, however, needful to ask whether this third 
part of the United States will be largely peopled within 
ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred years. These periods 
are brief in the upbuilding of States, as in the life of 
the human race. We need not ask whether or not our 
statisticians are correct, who reckon on a population 
of a hundred millions in the year 1900; or whether 
there will be two hundred millions at the bi-centen- 
nial. Nor need we examine the grounds of the state- 
ment in the new edition of the British Encyclopaedia, 



16 THE NEW WEST. 

that, if the natural resources of America were fully 
developed, it would sustain a population of thirty-six 
hundred millions, and that it is not improbable thai 
this number may people America within three or four 
centuries. We need not ask how soon Colorado, New 
Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, and 
Wyoming will number ten millions, twenty, or forty, 
since it is only a question of time when these regions 
will be practically filled with a grazing, farming, min- 
ing, manufacturing population, — a New West, less 
densely crowded than the Atlantic seaboard, or the 
Pacific shore, or the swarming valley of the Mississippi, 
yet supporting no small share of the American people. 
It is enough for the purpose of this paper to state 
that there is now a population of nearly four hundred 
thousand in Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah ; and 
that emigrants are now pouring into almost every part, 
of the New West every year ; and that the most prac- 
tical business men in the country, who are conversant 
with the movements of population in America, are 
taking most positive action with reference to the im- 
mediate occupancy of Colorado and New Mexico, and 
the developments of a growing trade in this new west- 
ern country. It is noteworthy that the New York 
newspapers are beginning to issue editions in Spanish,, 
to introduce trade into New Mexico and further south. 
In a single year, in which Mexico imported twenty-nine 
million dollars worth of cotton stuffs, the United States 
furnished little more than one tenth. In 1877 the 
imports of the United States from Mexico amounted to 
nearly fourteen and one half millions of dollars; in 
that year we sold to Mexico goods amounting to only 
four and one half millions. Is it not time for the rail- 
way king to unite the Republics ? Important railways 
have been begun, looking toward the southwest, — 



THE NEW WEST. 



17 



and one from Denver to the city of Mexico, — upon 
the ground that the region to be passed through is 
already a very remunerative one for traffic, and that 
it will be soon occupied by a more dense and more 
prosperous population. The result, in the most not- 
able instance of far-sightedness and economical man- 
agement, is fully justifying the confidence of those who 
have engaged in the work. 




GLEN EYRIE. 



II. 

What sort of an element will the New West make 
in the Republic of the future ? Every part of the civ- 
ilized world is interested in answering this question. 

We shall find a very large population of widely scat- 
tered and wandering herdsmen, enrolled in sparse vot- 
ing precincts ; and of farmers, up and down reaches of 
creeks and ditch ways ; and of miners, located here 
and there in mountain camps ; and a few large towns 
and cities, not unlike the surrounding population, — a 
people not easily brought under Gospel influences at 
this time, in which the character of these great States 
of the future is shaping itself. Men apparently 
thoughtless as their cattle, drift to the border, wherever 
that shifting boundary may be, " floating along on the 
edge of colonization like weeds borne forward by the 
waves of sea." Many are the herdsmen, ranchmen, 
miners, traffickers, who move from one lonely point 
to another, everywhere at home under the bright sky, 
and little more mindful of spiritual development than 
the Indians who roamed the plains, or wandered over 
the mountains before them. Not a few of those who 
have higher aims in life, are restlessly chasing the roll- 
ing dollar, or engrossed in the heavy cares of very un- 
certain business, and others are coining money, — all 
too busy to heed the voice of God. As the years go 
by, the population becomes more fixed ; but their gen- 
oral characteristics are very different from those which 
obtain in older States. It is not strange, therefore, 



THE NEW WEST. 19 

that it is difficult to find Christian teachers adapted to 
the people, in sufficient numbers to meet the wants of 
these growing communities, and that the principles 
which underlie social morality, and national success, 
are neglected by no small portion of the population. 
It needs, however, no argument to show that popular 
neglect of the Biblical principles of love to God and 
love to man is damaging to social life and to political 
prosperity. 

The bright-eyed young men now perched upon the 
tops of Colorado mountains, or nestling in deep basins 
walled in by peaks of gold, are not easily led into the 
practice of all the Christian virtues. It requires only 
a small acquaintance with life in the far west, to recog- 
nize the elements for upbuilding a godless empire, if 
the power of the Gospel does not make itself felt 
through a Christian education, so broad, manly, thor- 
ough, as to win the respect of the leaders of public 
opinion, and to influence the masses through men 
trained upon the ground for this special work. There 
has been nowhere in the experience of the nation any 
such condition for the founding of new States as we 
have seen in the gold countries. The settlement of 
the valley of the Mississippi witnessed no such reckless 
career as that which has existed in the very early 
planting of these new regions. If there be added to 
this disadvantage an anti-christian influence on the 
part of the leaders of society, it will be very difficult 
to win the people to a practical faith in God and un- 
selfish love for man, unless Christianity has firm hold 
of the higher education of the youth in these regions. 
A Christian college ought to make itself felt as a 
moulding power in this part of the country. Infidelity 
is often based on a misconception of Christianity. It is 
disarmed by any work that manifests light and love as 



20 THE NEW WEST. 

they appear in the Gospel. An intelligent and loving 
Christianity has nothing to fear ; but it must be intel- 
ligent. If ignorant persons are left to monopolize the 
pulpit and the school-house, men of intelligence will 
think they clo well to reject the dictum of such teach- 
ers, and will doubt their divine calling. 

Without the sharp intellectual training of our colleges, 
the leaders of society would be shorn of their power, 
or wield it in the fashion of semi-barbarians. But if 
the college be infidel or Jesuitical, morality is under- 
mined, and the republic cannot stand. Unless there is 
a positive Christian influence in our higher schools, 
Christianity will go to the wall, and our nation will be- 
come weak through wickedness. The nation is at this 
moment suffering at the hands of ignorance and im- 
morality in high station. Civilization perpetuates itself 
through the higher education. The culture of the col- 
lege permeates society. If the college is godless, the 
civilization will be half pagan. If Christianity is fun- 
damental in elevating the race, the Christian college is 
the instrument through which to advance Christian civ- 
ilization. Give to irreligion and infidelity the training 
of the most promising youth in our country for one or 
two generations, and the fountain of our positive Chris- 
tian influences for the renovation of the world will be 
dried up. 

There will be no lack of education in the far West ; 
whether it will be Christian, is for Christian men to de- 
termine. Infidelity will not hesitate to ally to itself 
the best of scientific and literary culture. Suppose 
that young men master the problems they undertake, 
even if they pay no attention to the question of the 
truthfulness of Christianity and the basis of its claims, 
still they think themselves equal with all their intel- 
lectual acumen, to pronounce upon the highest spirit- 



THE NEW WEST. 21 

ual themes, concerning which they have heard more or 
less since boyhood. And if they do not accept Chris- 
tianity, they hardly admit that they have not given 
attention to it. Allow every claim except the claims 
of God to be urged in school days, and the voice of 
God will go unheeded. 

A Christian education is not, however, likely to de- 
velop itself in frontier society without the direct inter- 
position of the men who have a purpose to do it. If no 
attention is given to it, irreligion and skepticism will 
educate the children. Allow the higher education of a 
frontier State to become the football of the average pol- 
itician, and Christianity will find no quiet abiding place 
in it. The leading Christian men who have lived in the 
vicinity of these experiments are clear in their testi- 
mony, that it is almost impossible to develop and carry 
forward a wise plan for the higher Christian education 
in connection with State institutions. The State man- 
agement is at an early stage put upon guard against the 
interest of various sects, and, on the other hand, anti- 
Christian influences stand pressing against the door ; so 
there is likely to spring up a lack of sympathy with the 
Christian element in society, which indeed, often mani- 
fests itself at the outset. Yet there is no one instru- 
mentality for the world's moral advancement so impor- 
tant as the Christian training of youth, who are to be 
the leaders of the world in the years next ensuing. It 
is on this account, that many parents, whose own lives 
are failures morally, are anxious to secure education 
under Christian teachers for their own children, at the 
time when they most need the restraining influences of 
religious faith and precept. 

Unless the men who propose to energize Christianity 
with their own business energy, establish the Christian 
college in the New West, and in every generation 



22 THE NEW WEST. 

imbue some portion of the leaders of the State with 
the principles of Christian faith and life ; and train a 
ministry upon the ground adapted to the wants of the 
country, and train them so thoroughly, intellectually 
and spiritually, that they can win a hearing and a fol- 
lowing • and place a Christian teacher in every school 
district, — they will fail in occupying this region for 
their Master. The Christian college is an " institution 
for perpetuating Christianity in the world." 1 

The grand movements for the moral elevation of the 
world have their spring in the Christian school. The 
Christian college for training the leaders of society is 
the instrument chosen of God, and used age after age. 
He chooses to work through organizations ; He has 
honored and indorsed the Christian college. His in- 
strument is fitted to do His work. The history of this 
country proves it, and shows the wisdom of founding 
such colleges for creating a Christian civilization. If 
we are wise, we shall put this renovating power into 
the far West. Although individual teachers and grad- 
uates fall like leaves, the college will endure and prove 
a perpetual power, influencing every generation of the 
state, growing through the centuries like some gigantic 
tree on the slopes of the Sierra, whose life is continued 
by a foliage constantly perishing and constantly re- 
newed. 

The moral interests of the New West cannot be se- 
cured beyond peradventure in any other way than by 
the establishment of a Christian college for the young 
people, who will in their maturity mould the state. 
If large-hearted givers will furnish a permanent sup- 
ply of well trained men for leadership in society, and 
exercise a constant influence for good upon the flower 

1 J. P. Thompson, I). D., College Society Address. 



THE NEW WEST. 23 

of the youth, in an area of country whose citizens will 
very soon be numbered by millions and which is capa- 
ble of sustaining a vast population, they will take rank 
with the noblest benefactors of their race. Those men 
are shortsighted who will only do and die to-day. 
There are many men who are occupied with present 
affairs with little thought of the future. The kingdom 
of God knows nothing of months and years. A thou- 
sand years are as one day. The conflict between good 
and evil will go forward century after century, until 
the perfect reign of peace ; and God's peace on the 
earth will never be maintained except through the 
reign of principles that accord with the most enlight- 
ened reason. One generation must, then, join hands 
with another in building those seminaries of learning 
which will train the leaders of mankind to habits of 
self-sacrifice for the good of others. Unless Christian 
men have the forethought, enterprise, and patience to 
do this, the Golden Rule will never be carried into 
practical effect as the common rule of life for the 
world's population, and the Golden Age of the world 
will never come. 

Are there not to-day two million sheep feeding on 
the Rio Grande ? One might as well build a mill in 
southern Colorado without water power or steam to 
manufacture their wool, as to try to build up a Chris- 
tian civilization on the frontier, — amid a half Mexican 
population, wandering herdsmen, scattered ranchmen, 
rough mining camps, and towns with a population 
gathered from the four winds, — without a Christian 
college. He who founds a college in a new country is 
planting the Christian pleader, physician, pedagogue, 
press, pulpit, platform, over a vast region through all 
ages of time. He who puts his money into Christian 
enterprises upon a foreign shore is a good servant of 



24 



THE NEW WEST. 



God ; but he who will be the honored instrument in 
planting ca Christian college in the New West, where it 
is imperatively needed to-day, will have mercy upon 
his own countrymen, and deserve the gratitude of un- 
counted generations. He will in this way exert an 
influence for raising to the heights of a Christian life 
the foreign element in the region of the college, and 
through its unending roll-call of students bestow a 
benediction upon the shining shores of far-off seas in 
distant ages. The time will not soon come when men 
will cease to send out missionaries ; but there will not 
be so long the golden opportunity to become the found- 
ers of Christian colleges at points in the West, where 
they are beyond doubt needed at this hour, and where 
they will wield a commanding power till time shall be 
no more. 




College Building as seen from Cascade Avknue. 
Vide p. 72. 



III. 

Historically, the principal colleges of the world 
have originated in the instinct of the Christian ministry 
to perpetuate itself. Twelve colleges in Oxford claim 
clerical founders. The English universities have, how- 
ever, proved of as much advantage to all the leaders of 
public opinion as to the Christian ministry, since no 
one is fit for the most sacred calling; among; men unless 
he has received a well proportioned education as a 
man. What the minister needs, in his general training, 
is what is needed by all who are liberally educated. 
Library, cabinet, laboratory, living teachers, quicken- 
ing contact with fellow pupils, are good for parishioner 
as well as parson. Unless the unrivaled facilities for 
studying natural science in the New West are seized 
upon, and made the instruments of culture, we shall 
find, growing up there, ill-proportioned men who will 
claim attention as religious teachers. 

Harvard and Yale were founded by clergymen to 
train men for the pulpit. But it is now more than 
twenty-five years since the Alumni of Yale College 
enrolled four signers of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, three members of the convention forming the 
Constitution of the United States, a vice-president, 
seven members of the cabinet, four foreign ministers, 
eighty-four judges of the United States or of State su- 
preme courts, one hundred seventy-eight members of 
Congress, forty governors and lieutenant-governors, 



26 THE NEW WEST. 

and one hundred forty-one presidents and professors of 
colleges. There are now above eight thousand grad- 
uates. 

Harvard was called the " School of the Prophets " 
for a hundred years. That the college has been of 
some use to the world besides educating " prophets," 
is proved by such names as Otis, Warren, Hancock, 
Samuel Adams, President Adams — father and son, — 
Prescott, Bancroft, Motley, Emerson, Sumner, Phillips, 
and a host of those who have kindled the fires of pa- 
triotism and given life to the Republic. The " proph- 
ets " of Harvard are heard all the world over calling 
upon public men to submit themselves to discipline in 
youth, to lose all narrowness and bigotry, to cultivate 
that sense of honor without which nations deserve to 
perish. 

Dartmouth College furnished thirty-five hundred 
and fifty graduates in ninety-six years, among whom 
were thirty-one judges of the United States or of State 
supreme courts, seventy-six members of congress, two 
United States cabinet ministers, four ambassadors to 
foreign courts, fifteen governors, and one hundred 
thirty-one presidents or professors of colleges. Web- 
ster and Choate have been worth incalculably more to 
America than all the money given for the endowment 
of Dartmouth College. 

Princeton College in its first century not only edu- 
cated nearly four hundred fifty ministers, and fifty-four 
presidents and professors in colleges, but it trained for 
public service a president and vice-presidents, mem- 
bers of the cabinet, judges of the United States or of 
State supreme courts, members of Congress, governors 
of States, — not less than one hundred sixty-eight per- 
sons occupying the highest positions in our country. 
Twenty-seven hundred graduates left Princeton in its- 



THE NEW WEST. 27 

first hundred years, making their influence felt in every 
corner of our country. 

These colleges, founded by clergymen to give a well 
proportioned culture to the Christian ministry of all 
generations, have, also, trained the leading public men 
of America. Let no man, therefore, despise the prac- 
tical wisdom of that Society which has sought to estab- 
lish Christian colleges at strategic points in the Old 
West, and which aims to do the same work in the New 
West. The donors to the American College and Edu- 
cation Society will do more in shaping the distant fu- 
ture of the United States than any other band of the 
same number in the nation. It will be impossible to 
plant a Christian college in Colorado, without doing 
much, thereby, toward modifying the future of New 
Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, and every rising 
State in that reg-ion. 

o 

Remove from America the influence of the seventy 
thousand persons who graduated at American colleges 
before 1856, and you would put out the light of Church 
and State. The statisticians of thirty years ago, pre- 
pared lists enumerating, — six hundred thirty mem- 
bers of Congress, four hundred judges in supreme 
courts, two hundred governors and lieutenant-govern- 
ors, one hundred sixty presidents and four hundred 
professors of colleges, among the thirty-five thousand 
graduates of America at that date. The bearing of this 
statement upon the argument of this paper is made 
clear by the fact that of the forty-two thousand grad- 
uates before 1850, thirty-six thousand of them were 
trained in colleges under the leading management of 
Congregational and Presbyterian Christians. 1 This 
fact proves that, historically, these denominations 
have taken the leadership in the higher education of 

1 Eighth Report of the College Society. 



28 THE NEW WEST. 

America ; and that the working policy of these colleges 
has been so unsectarian as to practically meet the 
wants of Christian people of every name ; and that the 
general public has demanded colleges in which the 
claims of a religious life are recognized. One hundred 
and four, of the first one hundred and nineteen colleges 
established in the country, are of a decidely Christian 
character and faith. 1 

It is, therefore, absolutely certain that colleges in 
America have been in the main founded by Christian 
people for the sake of educating a ministry, and train- 
ing the leading minds of the nation. And it is abso- 
lutely certain that the American College and Education 1 
Society, which has been engaged for many years in 
building Christian colleges in the West, is working in 
the historic line, the line of certain success, and that 
it will accomplish what it undertakes to clo. It is the 
organ of a Christian sentiment, as prevalent and power- 
ful as Christianity itself. The founding of Christian 
colleges is essential to the propagation of Christianity ;, 
this is proved by the history of the progress of the 
kingdom of God in the world ; this work will, therefore, 
be carried forward. And it is now the very hour for 
planting a strong Christian college in the New West,, 
which includes territorially one third of the United 
States, and contains at this hour a vigorous population 
busily laying the foundation of future States. The foun- 
dation of one State is so far laid, that it has been received 
into the Union ; and a Christian college ought to be 
planted there at once by the Christian men who intend 
to take and to hold that part of the continent for Christ. 

Does not the Christian College bear the same rela- 
tion to the leaders of Church and State that the common 
school does to the average mind ? Does it not educate' 

1 Thirteenth Report of the College Society. 



THE NEW WEST. 29 

certain men, who in turn become colleges to the people 
whose school-clays are short? He who founds a Chris- 
tian college is training Christian merchants, editors, 
teachers, lawyers, physicians, statesmen, and establish- 
ing Christian instrumentalities innumerable ; and his 
work will continue till day and night cease. No light- 
houses on the coast are so useful as these Christian lights 
planted on the borders of civilization ; no artesian wells, 
irrigating arid wastes, of such service to mankind as 
these fountains of Christian life ; no seeds so fruitful as 
these Christian colleges for hundreds of generations. 
Do not trained intellectual forces rule society ? Is there 
no demand for mind in this world ? Are not the insti- 
tutions, whose business it is to develop mental power, 
vital to civilization ? And is it not essential that they 
be under Christian management, if the divine law of 
love to God and love to man is to rule the world ? 
Shall our Christian workers relinquish their hold on 
the centres of power ? If the religious principles which 
underlie the best social life, and which are essential to 
self government, are to pervade the New West, and 
control its destinies, there is no way in which Christian 
men can aid so efficiently as by founding a Christian 
college early in the development of that region. If 
the thinkers of that wild, beautiful country, of promise 
so vast in the future, are trained under Christian 
teachers, their thoughts will develop into Christian 
States. Is it not a noble thing to aim for, to direct 
the formative powers, to bring the leading mental 
forces of awakening empires into captivity to the law 
of love as manifested in the Gospel, the law of self- 
sacrifice for the good of others. The men who give 
their money to this work touch the sources of Christian 
progress in our country in the near and distant future. 
If it is wise to clothe and feed America, it is Christian 



30 THE NEW WEST. 

wisdom to use a part of the money made in the busi- 
ness, for endowing the educated men of America with 
the thoughts of God. 

This is not a petty question, as to giving a little in- 
struction in Latin grammar, algebra, and rhetoric. 
The Jesuits would, as soon as not, do that ; and all 
irreligious powers would be glad to combine to do it. 
But it is a question, whether or not the men of an 
earnest and aggressive Christian faith and life are 
quick sighted and far sighted enough to seize on the 
instruments of education, for no dull and narrow secta- 
rian ends, but for the purpose of filling the minds of 
wide-awake young men with principles of morality 
and faith and love, which are the true foundation of 
the Republic, and of all good to the human race. Shall 
this work be neglected or delegated to those whose 
spiritual vision is clouded by the haze of old supersti- 
tion or of new unbelief? Shall we lay up beams of 
silver and gold to glisten in the eastern sun, or shall 
we use our silver and gold for laying the foundations 
of many generations in some Christian temple of learn- 
ing, which will be illumined by the Spirit of God, which 
will send its light into every mountain valley, and along 
the borders of every stream, and across every wide 
plain, in a third part of our continent ? 

Could we for a moment examine, somewhat in de- 
tail, the work already inaugurated by the colleges un- 
der the care of the College Society, we should see that 
the planting of Christian colleges in the newer portions 
of our country is second in importance to no work we 
undertake for America. An analysis of the army of 
the West and Northwest shows that the salvation of 
the Union in time of peril was due in no small measure 
to the influence of these colleges, in founding churches 



THE NEW WEST. 31 

and in moulding public opinion in the northern part 
of the valley of the Mississippi. It is impossible to 
overestimate the value to the nation of the an ti- slavery 
ideas promulgated throughout the West in the early 
history of Oberlin, the pouring out of officers for the 
army from every college, the influence of men in the 
ranks who were college graduates and accustomed to 
lead in social life, and the moral weight of men who 
swarmed from the home missionary churches. As 
patriots we ought to train the New West to an intelli- 
gent citizenship under decidedly Christian influences. 

It is a matter of history that the institutions fostered 
by our College Society have been fountain heads of 
Christian life in the West. Pour Christianity into the 
fountain, and it will flow out in life-giving streams. 
God's channel of mercy to the earth runs through the 
Christian college. Those persons are ill-informed who 
speak lightly of the influence of the Holy Spirit in 
moving upon the minds of young men in college, and 
the far reaching results when those who are to become 
leaders of the nation acknowledge God as the scuide of 
their youth. Did not one hundred and seventy young 
men become Christians in six revivals in Dartmouth 
College ? Did not five hundred men acknowledge 
themselves followers of the Son of Man in fourteen out 
of the twenty revivals in Yale College during its first 
century ? Were there not three hundred conversions 
in Amherst College within thirty years ? 

In Illinois, Wabash, and Marietta colleges, there were 
twenty revivals recorded in eighteen years before 
1848. One hundred and fourteen of the first one hun- 
dred and thirty-one graduates were Christians. In 
Marietta, seventy-five per cent, of the four hundred 
and four graduates in thirty-eight years have been 
Christians, one third of them converted in college. 



32 THE NEW WEST. 

Did not Major Williams, of New London, do good ser- 
vice to the divine kingdom, in his annual donation to- 
ward the expenses of Marietta during ten years, at a 
critical time in the history of the college ? Without 
him, or some man like him, there would have been no 
college. Wabash was established by a handful of poor 
home missionaries kneeling in the forest on a Novem- 
ber day, dedicating the frozen ground and its cloak of 
snow to Almighty God. Three thousand students on 
that ground have been trained under Christian teach- 
ers. Fourteen years witnessed nine revivals. Four 
fifths of the graduates of the Beloit College have gone 
out to the world as Christian men. Oberlin has grown 
up in a constant revival. Its light is like that of the 
sun, illuminating a vast area of the West and South. 
Christian students have gone out like an army to take 
the kingdom of heaven by force. The Western Re- 
serve College, founded by home missionaries to train 
home missionaries, has had in all departments not less 
than five thousand students. It has been not uncom- 
mon to find from two thirds to four fifths of the whole 
number of pupils at any given time enrolled as men of 
Christian character and influence. 

The colleges planted by the American College and 
Education Society have rendered such efficient aid to 
Christian families in educating their children, and they 
have, also, proved so positive a power in making 
known the claims of a religious life to students who 
have not previously heard the Gospel message, that 
John Todcl did well in saying that we have every evi- 
dence of the divine approval in this noble work, ex- 
cept that no archangel has thrust down a trumpet to 
blow the approbation of God into our ears. 1 

- 1 Plain Letters. 



THE NEW WEST. 33 

Does it need to be said that no such beneficent 
results have been known, or are likely to be known, 
where Christian people neglect to plant the Christian 
college, and leave the youth to be cared for by unbe- 
lievers or by Jesuits ? 

How much has been wrought by the moulding Chris- 
tian influence of these colleges in the valley of the 
Mississippi, even in the brief period since they were 
founded, can never be known by statistics. The num- 
ber of graduates who look to the College Society as a 
fostering mother, is now nearly three thousand. It is 
probable that thirty thousand students have been in 
attendance for a greater or less length of time. 1 

No small portion of the twenty-seven thousand stu- 
dents who have not completed the full course of study 
have become teachers of common schools in the West. 
It is impossible to give approximate figures as to the 
numbers so engaged. One year there were five hun- 
dred and thirty Oberlin students employed as teachers; 
there have been several hundred each year during 
twenty years. 2 Probably, from fifteen to twenty thou- 
sand district schools have been taught by students from 
the preparatory departments of the colleges aided by 
our College Society ; besides a vast number of acade- 
mies which have been taught by graduates of these 
colleges. ' These colleges have already served as 
Normal Schools to an extent little looked for by their 
founders. Is it not then essential to plant the Chris- 
tian college in the New West, to develop the common 
school system among Mormons, Mexicans, Indians, and 
the heterogeneous border population ? 

If it be true that American colleges have been 

1 Dr. J. E. Roy, Congregational Quarterly, January, 1877. 

2 President Fairchild. 

3 



34 THE NEW WEST. 

founded, in the first instance, like those of the Old 
World, for maintaining an educated ministry, it is in 
point to inquire concerning the relation of the Chris- 
tian college to clerical ranks, since it is mainly upon 
this ground that the college is early planted in the 
home missionary field. The emphasis placed by Amer- 
ican churches upon an educated ministry is shown 
by the fact, that of nine hundred Congregational min- 
isters in Connecticut before 1832, all but thirty- 
three were college graduates. Of the eleven hundred 
alumni of Andover Seminary before 1851, only fifty- 
eight had not received a college education. 1 

The religious influence of the college has a vital 
bearing on maintaining and increasing the number of 
Gospel heralds. It is estimated that one quarter of 
our ministry become Christians in college. One half 
of the ministers from those colleges, aided by the Col- 
lege Society, commenced their Christian course in term 
time.' 2 John Robinson, the leader of the Pilgrims, 
John Cotton, Jonathan Edwards — father and son, — 
Samuel Hopkins, Ebenezer Porter, Moses Stuart, B. B. 
Edwards, E. E. Cornelius, B. B. Wisner, E. N. Kirk, 
and a host of the most useful ministers in America, 
began a Christian life in college. 3 

The Christian college, designed to train Christian 
preachers, creates an atmosphere favorable for recruit- 
ing the ministry. The colleges of America have met 
the demand, furnishing most ministers when most 
needed, in the early settlement of the regions where 
they are located. When Harvard was two hundred 
years old, more than one fourth of her graduates were 
enrolled as ministers ; during the first sixty years, more 

1 John Kilborn, A. M., in Tyler's Prayer for Colleges, rev. ed., p. 316. 

2 Lyman Whiting, College Society Address. 

3 Sixteenth Report, College Society. 



THE NEW WEST. 35 

than one half became pastors. Yale has given above 
two thousand graduates to this work, — about one 
fourth of all. During the first twelve years, three 
fourths of her alumni entered the ministry, and during 
the first thirty years nearly one half. The New Eng- 
land theology has been shaped in no small degree by 
thinkers trained in this college. Forty-six out of nine- 
ty-nine of the first graduates of Dartmouth entered 
the ministry ; ten years ago the list showed seven hun- 
dred. Up to the year 1857, forty-three per cent, of 
the alumni of Middlebury College were preachers ; 
the proportion varied little from this at Amherst. 
One fourth of the graduates of Brown University have 
become ministers, and nearly one half of the eleven 
hundred sent out by Wesleyan University. Thirty- 
four per cent, of the graduates of ten New England 
colleges previous to 1845 were pastors. 1 Out of thirty- 
five thousand alumni of the colleges of the United 
States, thirty years ago, between eight and nine thou- 
sand were ministers of the Gospel. The first college 
west of the Alleghany mountains, Jefferson, numbers 
noarly seventeen hundred alumni ; of whom more than 
half have been preachers. 

The colleges nurtured by the College Society have 
trained great numbers of home missionaries. More 
than one third of the alumni of Western Reserve be- 
fore 1868, were pastors. Of the first ninety-four grad- 
uates of Illinois College, forty-five became preachers, 
rendering invaluable service in the West. Wabash 
gave forty-five of the first sixty-five. Marietta sent 
sixty-five from the first one hundred thirteen ; at this 
day her ministers have made a record in more than 
twenty States of the Union. In 1868, Beloit had fur- 
nished fifty-two men from one hundred thirty-four 

1 Thirteenth Report, College Society. 



36 THE NEW WEST. 

graduates. Two hundred fifty churches have been sup- 
plied from this college. Iowa College has given forty 
per. cent of her graduates to the ministerial office. 
The sun never sets upon her sons and daughters en- 
gaged in missionary work. 1 The Western colleges, 
aided by the College Society, have already trained 
from seventeen to eighteen hundred pastors. 2 The 
American Home Missionary Society has employed a 
portion of these students in nineteen hundred and 
forty-eight towns. The Congregational churches west 
of the eastern line of Ohio, comprising only twenty- 
nine per cent, of the whole membership of the coun- 
try, are now furnishing forty-eight per cent, of our 
candidates for the ministry. 3 The six interior States 
furnish only one candidate less than the six New Eng- 
land States, although the latter have twice the church 
membership of the former. 4 

Does it need to be inquired whether the average 
Western State university can be relied upon to train 
home missionaries ? Michigan University, in 1876, 
with three hundred fifty-two professors of religion 
among more than a thousand students had only nine 
candidates for the ministry. 5 In 1872, seven years' 
record of our theological seminaries showed that sev- 
enty-eight per cent, of the students from the West 
came from colleges nourished by our College Society. 6 
If the West is left to be supplied with a Christian min- 
istry by State universities, the people will perish by a 
famine of the words of the Lord. Born of no distinc- 
tively Christian purpose, and no self-sacrifice ; not un- 

1 Tyler, Prayer for Colleges, rev. ed., p. 284. 

2 Dr. Roy, Congregational Quarterly, January, 1877. 

3 Thirtieth Report, College Society. 

4 President Chapin. 

6 Tyler, Prayer for Colleges, rev. ed., p. 282. 
6 Twenty-ninth Report, College Society. . 




Pit m 

1 1 1 & 1 1 



5 r 



THE NEW WEST. 39 

frequently with instructors who are little imbued with 
the spirit of the Gospel; subject more or less to politi- 
cal intermeddling, — the State university is not likely 
soon to enter into competition with the Christian col- 
lege for the training of missionaries. Kill out the 
Christian college, and the supply of home and foreign 
missionaries will be cut off. 

Unless the Christian college is built upon the ground 
where it is needed, it fails to do its work. While it is 
true that one live college will make itself felt to the 
ends of the world, it is not true that it will be so 
largely useful at the Antipodes, as it will be to give 
the graduate of the primal college money enough to 
build another school in that strange, wild country, 
where he has located. The divine command — Go 
preach — leads through training schools. But our 
home missionary Secretaries find it difficult to man the 
front ; and the future years are calling loudly as the 
present. " It is the sons of the West, educated on her 
own soil, who must preach the Gospel to the West." * 

Poverty in youth is likely to lead a clergyman to 
habits of self-denial, and to adapt him to the average 
man. But the poor young man of the West cannot 
come East to be educated ; and if he does, the East 
may keep him. Three fourths of the pupils of our 
country are of slender means, or poor. 2 The college 
must be planted in the inexpensive West, near the men 
to be benefited by it. Would a poor widow in New 
England send her son to Colorado to be educated ? It 
is only a little further to send him to England. Our 
fathers sent a few pupils to Oxford and Cambridge, but 
they quickly decided to build a Cambridge at their 

1 Lyman Beecher. 

2 Professor Haddock, College Society Address. 



40 THE NEW WEST. 

own doors ; and to send beggars to England to raise 
money for their college : and Old England gave it 
most generously. 

" We cannot expect that a university at Brunswick 
or Burlington will diffuse the same healthful glow 
among the inhabitants of Wisconsin and Iowa, as 
among the population closely encircling it. We might 
as well expect that the flowers which bloom in Maine 
or Vermont would sweeten the air of the prairies ; 
that one forest, one mountain range, would purify the 
atmosphere of our entire land. The Western waters 
cannot be navigated by steamers all whose engines are 
kept at the east. Our higher schools must be near to 
the communities which they would attract with a mag- 
netic power." 2 

The rich are few. It is, therefore, not strange that 
the majority of those who enter the most self denying 
service are not from rich families. A widow in Vermont 
reads the life of Harriet Newell, and, having no money 
for missions, she gives her four sons to the service. 
Another woman asks, who among her eleven children 
will preach the Word in foreign lands ; and, when one 
volunteers, she sells her gold beads to buy classical 
books for him. The need of missionaries ten years 
hence should lead us to plant the Christian college 
within reach of self denying Christian families in the 
West. The colleges nourished by the College Society 
have already sent abroad one hundred and twenty-five 
men, and many women, as foreign missionaries. 2 This 
is more than were sent by Dartmouth, Amherst, Wil- 
liams, and Micldlebury, before 1856. 

Colorado College, at Colorado Springs, is more than 
five hundred miles from any other Christian college. 

1 Professor Edwards A. Park, College Society Address. 

2 Joseph E. Roy, D. D., Congregational Quarterly, January, 1877. 




CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN, AS SEEN FROV1 TEJON STREET. 



THE NEW WEST. 43 

The three nearest are those noble and needy enter- 
prises, Drury, Washburn, and Doane. Colorado Col- 
lege is further by rail from Doane than it is from An- 
dover to Oberlin ; more distant by rail from Washburn 
than from Vermont University to Hudson's Bay ; as far 
from Drury as from Williams College to Lake Superior. 
If the children of the more than one hundred and 
twenty-five Christian churches in Colorado are ever 
trained for home or foreign missionary service, they 
must have a Christian college in Colorado. No gifts of 
money to foreign shores, or to any other instrumental- 
ity for Christian labor than that of the College Society, 
will supply the men needed for the whole work of the 
Church. Christian colleges must be planted — not too 
remote from each other — in the very neighborhood of 
the young men who desire to bear an honorable part 
in bringing in the reign of God, and who will band to- 
gether to carry the Gosj)el to every hamlet on plain or 
mountain, and to far countries. The business of rais- 
ing up the men is fundamental to the growth of Chris- 
tianity, and the Society which is doing this ought to 
receive the hearty support of our churches. It cer- 
tainly will receive generous gifts from the most thought- 
ful men ; the more generous, if the inconsiderate give 
little. 

It can require only a slight knowledge of the condi- 
tion of the New West, to determine that the founding; 
of a Christian college in Colorado is the first thing to 
be done in pushing Christian work in that region. Col- 
orado is sufficiently developed to warrant establishing 
a college ; other localities in the New West will not call 
for similar work for some years. But these are the 
very years in which a home missionary training school 
is needed, in the region where so many new churches 
will be soon founded. The distances are magnificent, 



44 THE NEW WEST. 

and if Santa F6 is three hundred fifty miles from Colo- 
rado College, it is at least two thousand miles nearer 
than it is to Harvard and Andover ; and it is much 
more likely that the Christian students of Colorado- 
Springs will be ready to act as home missionaries in 
Arizona than that Harvard and Andover men will go- 
there. It is practically easier to obtain home mission- 
aries from the West than from the East. The Western 
man belongs to a moving family. The grandfather 
lived in Connecticut ; the father in Illinois ; the son is 
in Colorado ; the great-grandson will certainly go to 
Arizona, or crowd into Mexico to preach the Gospel ; 
and the chances are that he will be a better missionary 
than if he had been born in Connecticut. 

Colorado College is a thousand miles from any the- 
ological seminary. What shall we do about it ? The 
time is not at hand, but it is not distant, when a strong 
theologian must be planted upon the Rocky Mountain 
plateau, to grapple with unbelief as he finds it in the 
New West, and to train young men there for Christian 
enterprise. A student from Holsteinborg in Green- 
land, within the Arctic circle, would not have to travel 
so far to Andover as a student from Colorado Springs. 
A student from Vancouver's Island moving in an air 
line, will reach Colorado College almost as soon as a 
Colorado student can reach Chicago Seminary. Some- 
time between now and the perfect reign of Christ, there 
will be opened upon this mountain plateau a fountain 
from which will flow home missionary influences ; and 
the day cannot be put far off, unless the millennium is 
to dawn late in the New West. It is liable to dawn late, 
if we consider only the wild excesses of new mining 
camps, religious indifference and unbelief in village and 
city, the moral disadvantages of sparse farming settle- 
ments, and the strange life of the " cow-boys." 



THE NEW WEST. 4& 

It is indeed true, that the power of Christianity — 
what there is of it — is nowhere more fresh and life- 
giving than in the New West. As good society can be 
found at the base of the Rocky Mountains as anywhere 
on the planet. But the Christian people there will 
need constant reinforcement from the East, in order to 
conquer and hold this region. And there is no way in 
which they can be so effectually aided as by the estab- 
lishment of a Christian College. 

Is not Colorado College at this moment an important 
point in Christian strategy ? It is beyond the great 
plains, in the immediate neighborhood of the Mormon 
and the Indian, and the Mexican element of our Re- 
public, as well as in contiguity with regions that will 
be the front of the home missionary field for the next, 
fifty years. 

Are there not eighty thousand Mormons to be con- 
verted ? Mormon separation from civilization has been 
broken up by the advent of the railway and the Gen- 
tile. It is only through Christian education that the 
Mormons will be separated from polygamy. The way 
is now open for introducing this instrumentality. A 
progressive spirit is leading a large part of the people 
to desire education for their children, that they may 
equal their Gentile neighbors. There are no free 
schools in Utah, and the establishment of Christian in- 
struction of advanced grade will win a large Mormon 
patronage. It is at this moment possible by a judicious 
system to introduce Christian teachers of private schools 
at various points in Utah. The way may be thus pre- 
pared for free schools within a few years ; and this ter- 
ritory will be ready to become a State. A compara- 
tively small amount of money would go far towards 



46 THE NEW WEST. 

maintaining scores of teachers, who would earn a por- 
tion of their living by tuition. But this work cannot 
be clone to the best advantage without means of sup- 
plementing the pay of teachers, at this time, when the 
Mormon prejudice is first yielding. 

Judicious men are at the present time attempting to 
establish a Christian academy at Salt Lake. There are 
persons in Utah who will do much toward founding 
this enterprise. Generous friends have already ap- 
peared in the East. Any one who knows the com- 
mercial resources of Salt Lake, and of the region of 
which it is the natural centre, must consider the future 
of such an institution as one of great promise. There 
are already twenty-five thousand people gathered here, 
of whom, perhaps, five thousand are Gentiles. The 
ability of the western slope of the Rocky Mountains to 
maintain population is very great, and it is only a ques- 
tion of time when the Christian college will grow up 
from the Christian academy. Those persons who in- 
vest money in providing Christian instructors for Utah 
will not only do missionary work among the Mormons, 
but lay the foundations for a noble Christian State in 
the near future. The Presbyterian educational work 
in southern Utah is eminently successful. It will not 
be long before the many sons of Mormon parents will 
avail themselves of Christian schools at their own doors ; 
and some will take advanced studies in Colorado Col- 
lege. It is to-clay of the utmost importance to estab- 
lish academical work in Utah, and to hasten the time 
when a Christian college, well endowed, will rise near 
the present site of the Mormon Endowment House. 

Such an enterprise can, however, achieve the highest 
success only as it stands upon its own merits as an in- 
strument of Christian education. If it is in the least 
under ecclesiastical control, it will never gain the con- 



THE NEW WEST. 47 

fidence of all the people. Ages of experiment have 
shown that when an infant college is planted in a re- 
gion where it is needed, it will best merit the patron- 
age of all friends of the higher education by being free 
from political and free from ecclesiastical control, and 
governed by a self-perpetuating board of trustees 
chosen for their fitness for the trust, and manned by 
instructors of the highest order, elected on no other 
ground than their qualifications as educators. If it 
becomes the mere tool of a sect, it will never rise to 
the highest rank. 

Is it not likely, also, that there may be a few Indians 
left after the government gets through killing the most 
vicious ? It will be only fair treatment of the Gospel 
to test its power on the red men, who promise to 
occupy a portion of the great central mountain re- 
gions permanently, as American citizens. The results 
already achieved justify no small expectation of good 
to those tribes in the future. Bishop Whipple says, 
that there is not on the face of the earth a heathen 
people that offer so much encouragement for labor as 
the Indians. We learn on high authority that it costs 
the government a million dollars to kill one Indian ; 
upon the other hand, the American Board has ex- 
pended only a little more than a million dollars in In- 
dian missions during sixty years, laboring among a 
hundred thousand pagans in fifteen tribes. With this 
amount of money they have employed a thousand la- 
borers in mission work ; many of them to promote 
industrial education. Between four and five thou- 
sand Indians have been gathered into more than fifty 
churches. It is every way better to spend a million in 
Christian missions than in muskets. 

The government is, happily, finding a more excellent 



48 THE NEW WEST. 

way of dealing with these wild men. By expending 
some hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly 1 upon 
Indian education, and by promoting industrial training, 
the peace policy is bringing good fruit. Evidence is 
accumulating, which indicates that those who have 
roamed the great plains and herded ponies for centu- 
ries will become herdsmen, raising cattle. Those who 
have given the most attention to solving the problem 
of Indian civilization, have had great success in con- 
ducting industrial education among the Indians, with 
reference to developing in their wards the desire to 
accumulate cattle. It has been observed by thought- 
ful students of history, that barbaric populations have 
risen in the scale of manhood through pastoral life. 

Colorado College, located as it is with Indian reserva- 
tions on every side, — being nearer to seventy-five 
thousand Indians than any other Christian college, — 
would not be true to its position, without seeking to 
bear an honorable part in the elevation of these tribes. 
Unless it trains men to promote industrial education 
and to engage in school work among the Indians, it 
will little deserve the support of those who seek to 
build up in the New West a Christian college as a mis- 
sionary power in that needy region. The wild men 
who have recently come upon reservations will be a 
long time in learning the ways of civilized life, and 
there will be a loud call for Christian teachers. It re- 
quires no argument to show that instructors for the 
Indians during the next generation, in fact, until the 
red race is as well educated as the white, can be best 
trained in the New West. A Christian college, acting 
in its preparatory department as a Normal School, will 
be likely to meet this want, and to meet it with a good 
class of teachers who will enter the service from philan- 
thropic motives. It is not probable that a sufficient 

1 $337,379 in 1877 



THE NEW WEST. 4U 

number of competent persons to engage in this service 
will be transported from the valley of the Mississippi or 
the East ; but without them the capacity of the Indian 
race will never be fully developed. 

There are, moreover, in this connection, one or two 
other considerations, which make it very desirable to 
establish an institution of learning of the highest 
grade, in the New West, at an early date. And one is 
this, — that philological students in this region will 
have rare facilities for unraveling the vexed question 
of Indian tongues. If the Geographical Society of 
France thinks it worth the while to send a commission 
across the Atlantic to investigate the aboriginal Ian- 
guages of America, it is clear that a college, planted in 
the region where the bulk of the Indians reside, should 
train men who will help solve the problem. During 
the years of wild wandering and war, it has been diffi- 
cult to achieve much ; but now, for the first time, the 
Babel of tongues is fairly within the reach of scientific 
research. Major Powell, having achieved the impossi- 
ble in threading the canon of the Colorado River, is 
now attacking Indian philology. Having given more 
attention to the subject than any other person, he is 
of the opinion that among a hundred thousand Indians 
west of the Rocky Mountain range, there are a hun- 
dred languages distinct as Chinese and Arabic, with 
dialects as widely separated as the languages of Italy 
and Spain. The vocabularies which he is gathering 
will be of inestimable value to philologists of the future, 
who will beyond doubt discover the origin of the In- 
dians in their language. It is imperative, however, 
that the passing years be used in diligent research, 
since some of the tribes are perishing, and the use of 
English in the government schools will soon make the 
Indian youth forgetful of their own tongue. 

■4 



50 THE NEW WEST. 

The difficulty of the languages in question is illus- 
trated by the frequent mingling of Cheyennes and Ar- 
rapahoes for twenty-five years, and yet they cannot 
communicate with each other except by the sign lan- 
guage. The Kiowas and Comanches, often in contact 
during fifty years past, find the learning of each 
other's language too much of a task. All honor then 
to the students in Colorado College who will pick out 
Greek and Sanskrit ; but it will be discreditable if none 
of them are trained to interest themselves in living 
languages more difficult, for whose secret the philo- 
logical world is waitinsr. 

The Indian names are as full of dignity as any in 
the world. Melancthon and Humboldt were names 
once obscure to the world of letters as our friends in 
the Dakota ministry, — Toonkanshaechay, Mazawa- 
kinyanna, and David Grey Cloud. But the possibili- 
ties of Indian character may some day show to the 
world the eminent theologian and the man of science. 
If this day ever comes, however, it will be in some 
measure owing to an intelligent interest taken in the 
red men, by any Christian college that may be estab- 
lished in their own neighborhood. 

Thus far, work in Indian philology has been, in the 
main, fragmentary. There are pieces of grammars, 
dictionaries, and vocabularies. The works relate to 
single tongues or dialects. A comprehensive work is 
yet to be done, in grouping the different languages 
and developing their common relations. There is an 
open field for honorable service in the systematic study 
of aboriginal philology. The Smithsonian Institute is 
likely to achieve much in this direction ; but when we 
count up the share of the world's work, which right- 
fully belongs to a college in the New West, we must 
reckon it as one of the peculiar privileges of the loca- 




NEAR MANITOU MINERAL SPRINGS. 



THE NEW WEST. 53 

tion, to train men to investigate Indian philology in 
connection with the work of aiding Indian civilization. 

It is, also, true that the New West offers a rich 
field for the study of the origin of the aboriginal 
population of America. " There is scarcely a square 
mile in the six thousand examined," in the San Juan 
region, chiefly in southwestern Colorado, says Hayclen's 
Survey, 1 " that would not furnish evidence of occupa- 
tion by a race totally distinct from the nomadic sav- 
ages who hold it now, and in every way superior to 
them." 

If the cliff dwellings of Colorado, — two story houses 
perched upon the walls of precipitous canons eight 
hundred feet above the roaring waters, — are not so 
celebrated as the remains of Petra in the East, they 
are at least more accessible to the American public. 
These remains of primeval races in America are dis- 
covered throughout a large area of country, — in Colo- 
rado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada. Pot- 
tery, stone implements, fragments of matting, tied 
bundles of sticks, — tied up centuries since, — pictures 
cut upon walls, and other relics of a departed people, 
excite the interest of the explorer. The models of 
cave dwellings, low land settlements, and cliff-houses 
of the San Juan, which have been presented by the 
United States Government to the South Kensington 
Museum, London, have attracted attention in Europe. 

Twelve centuries since, the country southward from 
Colorado to the Isthmus was peopled by the Toltecs. 
They were, according to Humboldt, in the tenth cen- 
tury more civilized than the nations of northeastern 
Europe. But their palaces fell into the hands of the 
Chichemecs, who soon yielded to the Aztecs, advancing 
from the north. The culture of these people at the 

1 Report of W. H. Holmes. 



54 THE NEW WEST. 

time of the Spanish conquest is recorded in the pages 
of Prescott. It is well known that one of the first 
things the Romanists did, on arriving in the country, 
was to gather and burn the historical records of the 
natives, extending over eight centuries. It remains, 
therefore, to train enthusiastic laborers, who will enter 
this new field in the ancient land of Toltecs and Aztecs, 
and there attempt to read in ruins the record destroyed 
by the barbaric priests of a former age. 

It will not be difficult to kindle antiquarian zeal in 
young men whose lives will be spent in the very re- 
gions occupied by races which flourished and perished 
before the European stock was planted on this con- 
tinent. There are Indians to-day in the New West, 
who represent in fair measure the semi-civilization, 
superstitions, and religious faith, of those who possessed 
the land before the wild and savage tribes of recent 
years. Every friend of American history will take an 
interest in cultivating the historical spirit in the youth 
of the far West, that they, with material close at hand, 
may aid in solving problems of world-wide interest. 
Until we know the true story of the human race, we 
shall be at fault in solving the most important ques- 
tions of social science. The condition of those races 
whose history is yet unwritten, — or which is written 
only in cliffs, caves, mounds, and lake-beds, — will, 
therefore, continue to invite the attention of thought-- 
ful students ; and Colorado College will have no recog- 
nition of its advantage in position if it does not culti- 
vate a spirit of inquiry in what is now called the New 
West, but which comprises in its area the most ancient 
relics of man in America. 1 

It would, however, be foreign to the purpose of 

1 Col. W. W. Nevin, editor of the Philadelphia Press, is now publishing 



THE NEW WEST. 55 

establishing Christian learning, if great relative im- 
portance were to attach to the investigation of in- 
tricate questions of philology or perplexing problems 
of archaeology, when compared with the more difficult 
study of living men, who need to be raised in the 
scale of civilization. 

The population of Mexico comprises, at this time, 
perhaps, a million descendants of the early Spanish 
settlers, four millions of Indians, and three millions 
of a mixed race of Spanish and Indian blood, — all of 
them speaking the Spanish tongue. There are thirty 
thousand of this race in southern Colorado, partici- 
pating in the political life of the nation ; one hundred 
thousand more in New Mexico voting in a Territory, 
and wondering that they cannot vote as a State ; and 
a few more in Arizona. These people are Romanists, 
many of them of the mediaeval Spanish type. It is not 
so much to the point that they plow with crooked 
sticks, thresh their barley by driving goats over it, and 
practice the agricultural methods of a semi-civilized 
people, as that they are unfit, in respect to their intel- 
lectual and moral training, to exercise the right of suf- 
frage in America. It is absolutely necessary to plant a 
Christian college in the New West at an early date, 
that the influences which always flow from the higher 
education may operate upon this population. Our love 
for America ought to prompt us to do it. 

If our Protestant faith makes less of forms than of 
the interior life, it is more necessary that we emphasize 
the college and a thoughtful Christianity, and plant 
Christian schools among the Spanish-speaking popula- 
tion of our own country, to train the youth of strange 
tongue for honorable service in a Christian republic. 

charming sketches of personal adventure in Aztec land. To him I am in- 
debted for valuable information derived from new travel in an old country 



56 THE NEW WEST. 

The Church has been praying for the foreign mission 
field. One way in which God has answered these 
prayers has been by taking a large section of the 
foreign field and planting it close to our houses, as if 
we could look over our garden fences and see China, 
Africa, Rome, and a race of red men crying at our 
back-doors. We little heed their cry, considering how 
much we prayed for them before they became so com- 
mon among us. It is now twenty-eight years since a 
large population of Spanish Catholics became a part of 
our nation, and the prevailing church polity of New 
England has not yet so much as looked at them. If 
other denominations have had more mission zeal in 
recent years, we thank God for their energy, enter- 
prise, and Christian patriotism. The work, however, 
of training a good class of common school teachers, and 
of establishing industrial education, for this part of our 
nation, is one which commends itself to all friends of 
humanity and of our common country ; and there is 
room for all to work in whatever way good judgment 
may indicate. 

Rome in America has nearly ten thousand young 
men in colleges and seminaries to-day, under seven 
hundred fifty professors, Jesuits for the most part ; 
and half a million pupils in schools of a lower grade. 
This work is organized under seven religious orders of 
men, and thirty-six religious orders of women. 1 There 
can, then, be no question as to the policy that Rome 
will pursue in the New West. Already the Jesuits are 
stretching; out their hands after Protestant children. 

In California, the Romanists have one sixth of the 
population ; but one quarter of the churches. In 1870 
a State normal school, State university, military acad- 

1 Vide Murray's History of Roman Catholics in the United States. 



THE NEW WEST. 57 

emy, schools for the higher education under manage- 
ment Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, Disciples, and 
Baptist, reported less pupils by a thousand than the 
Catholics in 1876. A hundred and four papal profess- 
ors give instruction in five colleges for young men, and 
two academies for young women. All the colleges and 
academies under distinctively Christian Protestant in- 
fluences had, in 1870, only three tenths as many pupils 
as Romanist schools of the same grade in 1876. It 
need not be said that the papists do not lack for Protes- 
tant patronage. 

The Jesuits are quite ready to educate the New 
West. They have a good basis for operation in South- 
ern Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. We need not 
lift a hand to build a Christian college. The gigantic 
machinery of the Society of Jesus is silently getting 
under way at this moment. Protestant children in 
southern Colorado are already falling under the influ- 
ence of papal schools. The Romanists are doing far 
more than all other Christian denominations for educa- 
tion in Colorado. One school has an income of nearly 
six thousand dollars. In the principal convent in the 
State, five sevenths of the young ladies are from Prot- 
estant families. 

An eminent Christian philanthropist of rare literary 
skill, recruiting in a far country, once read very inter- 
esting news from America. It was in Rome, just be- 
fore the entrance of the Italian army. A little news- 
paper of the seven-hilled city, — judiciously ignoring 
local politics when the enemy was at the gate, — had 
a long leading article upon New Mexico ; which nearly 
filled the tiny sheet. As soon as freedom entered the 
city, armed with the bayonet, the Jesuits went out ; 
enough at least to form a large colony in New Mexico, 
where they at once established a newspaper, and began 



58 THE NEW WEST. 

a systematic attempt to get control of the politics of 
the territory. This is not difficult in a locality where 
three fourths of the voters are Romanists, ignorant and 
superstitious beyond belief. And if a tiny newspaper 
in Rome were now to print the latest news, there 
would be a long leading article on New Mexico, stat- 
ing that two thirds of the legislature are tools of the 
Jesuits, incorporating foreigners with peculiar priv- 
ileges for the education of the youth of America. The 
signs of the times show that political power is rapidly 
going West. New Mexico will soon be a State. Em- 
inent philanthropists of rare literary skill will do well 
to write long leading articles upon New Mexico. Is it 
not possible to plant a broad and truly Catholic educa- 
tion in that territory, that it may not prove one more 
ally for dishonoring the nation, when it becomes a 
State ? Demosthenes makes frequent use of the figure 
of the barbarian boxer, who never knew enough to 
look his antagonist in the eye and smite him by system, 
but who was perpetually putting his hands clown to 
protect any part of his body where he happened to be 
hit. It is plain enough that the future of America is 
hopeless, unless the Christian men of the nation will 
ignore sectarian interests and make common cause for 
the promotion of Christian education among ignorant 
and degraded populations in America wherever they 
are found. 

We need to learn of Rome. If Protestant Christian- 
ity has not so much ingenuity as the Jesuitical ; if An- 
glo-Saxon perseverance is not equal to the Roman ; if 
those who love an open Bible are not as ready to put 
money into Christian schools in the New West as our 
papal neighbors, — then the Pope may have the New 
West, and he will certainly take possession of a fair 
share of it. Those who are acquainted with the Jesuit 



THE NEW WEST. 59 

policy need not be told that their leading aim is to con- 
trol the future by the present education of youth. 

It ought not to be said that we are asleep, but when 
we wake up we shall know that we have been asleep. 
We starve and pinch the American Missionary Associ- 
ation, giving little more than two hundred thousand 
dollars a year towards founding Christian schools and 
planting Christian pulpits among four million freedmen 
in the pit of ignorance and degradation ; we clo little 
to speak of among the Celestial pagans on the Pacific 
slope ; and our labor among the Indians is light. But 
our Romish friends are now said to be spending six 
hundred thousand dollars a year among the freedmen, 
among whom they have one hundred and fifty thou- 
sand pupils under priestly schools. 1 There are one 
hundred thirty-seven Catholic missionaries and teachers 
among the Indians. We can but commend their zeal, 
which has been so signally manifested in the mission- 
ary work of all ages; and which illumined the dark 
forest abodes of the red men in the early history of 
America. Do we not need to learn of Rome ? 

Practically we do not do much missionary work 
among the Spanish-speaking people of America. Mex- 
ico has not been long open to the Gospel message. 
Presbyterian and Methodist missions, and the labors of 
the American Board in that country, are eminently suc- 
cessful ; but comparatively little is attempted among 
the eight or nine millions of our neighboring State, 
although thousands are throwing off the papal yoke, 
and the people are eager for the Word of Life. New 
Mexico is three times as large as New England. It is 
a portion of our domestic heritage. But we have 
hardly intimated to her people — a fraction of whom 
are sun-worshippers, as well as good Catholics — that 

1 James Powell, D. D, 



60 THE NEW WEST. 

they are any part of a Protestant or Christian nation. 
The Presbyterians and Methodists have opened school 
and mission work at two or three points in New 
Mexico, and an Episcopal bishop is now appointed to 
visit that country and Arizona. Other denominations 
ignore the work altogether. Is it not possible to make 
definite plans for the systematic training of competent 
common school teachers, and industrial teachers, for 
the express work of enlightening this dark corner of 
America ? 

We shall do well to learn of Rome, which proceeds 
calmly in carrying forward plans, century after cen- 
tury, for the conversion of the nations. We may wisely 
imitate them in their zeal for education, at least so far 
as to furnish a Christian college for Protestant children 
in Colorado. Unless our Christianity has faith to pre- 
pare the way for the millennium in Spanish America, 
whose faith will do it ? Shall New England Christians 
wait till Old England, or even Micronesia, sends mis- 
sionaries to New Mexico ? Is it not possible to train a 
few teachers and preachers in a Christian college near 
the work to be done ? It will be more easy to secure 
men than from the East. If the Spirit of the Lord de- 
scends with tongues of fire on a Christian college in the 
New West, it is likely that one of the tongues will be 
Spanish. 

There are, among the Spanish-speaking people of 
America, persons of great intelligence, culture, and lib- 
erality of spirit. They are Catholics, but they desire 
a reformation. They welcome Protestant ideas and 
any instrumentality that will elevate their people. 
There is no doubt that the school work which the au- 
thorities of Colorado College are now organizing for 
the Spanish-speaking population will have a good re- 
ception. It certainly will, if it be carried out with 
practical wisdom and the spirit of Christ, without con- 



THE NEW WEST. 61 

troversy. It is absolutely certain that if, within a 
few years, we can find a few Spanish-speaking youth, 
who will obtain a Christian education and then give 
themselves to mission work, we can do good work for 
Mexico ; and between now and the dawn of perfect 
light in that country, the Catholic colleges will become 
seminaries for the study of the Bible. Fourteen out of 
nineteen colleges now at Oxford were founded by Pa- 
pists. A religious reformation in Mexico can be best 
aided through Spanish-speaking young men from the 
United States, trained in a Christian college in their 
own neighborhood, founded by Christian men deter- 
mined to carry the world for Christ at the earliest pos- 
sible moment. These young men have it in them to 
reform their country. There are already native help- 
ers of apostolic zeal in Mexico. But some of them at 
least should be educated in a Christian college. 

The Denver and Rio Grande Railway, already a de- 
cided success as a business enterprise, now stretching, 
fir south, is chartered to the southern line of New 
Mexico and is aiming for the city of Mexico, which can 
be reached by easy grades ; a line sure of large profits 
by an immense business. This railway is now awaken- 
ing the drowsy Spanish American people ; and Chris- 
tian men of enterprise ought to enter, at this very 
moment, upon the work of throwing into these Mex- 
ican villages positive religious influences, which will at 
least seize upon the most vigorous young men among 
them, and prepare them for citizenship in a Christian 
country. 

If we send the Gospel to Old Spain, let us send it to 
New Spain within our own borders. That the New is 
not unlike the Old is easy to believe. We have medi- 
aeval Spanish Catholicism voting in Southern Colorado 
In the "Atlantic Monthly" for June, 1877, " H. H." 
gives some account of these dwellers in adobe houses : — 



62 THE NEW WEST. 

" There still exists among the Roman Catholic Mexicans of 
southern Colorado an order like the old order of the Flagel- 
lants. Every spring, in Easter week, several of the young 
men belonging to this order inflict on themselves dreadful 
tortures in public. The congregations to which they belong 
gather about them, follow them from house to house, and spot 
to spot, and kneel down around them, singing and praying 
and continually exciting their frenzy to a higher pitch. 
Sometimes they have also drums and fifes, adding a melan- 
choly and discordant music to the harrowing spectacle. The 
priests ostensibly disapprove of these proceedings, and never 
appear in public with the Penitentes. But the impression 
among outsiders is very strong that they do secretly counten- 
ance and stimulate them, thinking that the excitement tends 
to strengthen the hold of the church on the people's minds. 
It is incredible that such superstitions can still be alive and in 
force in our country. Some of the tortures these poor crea- 
tures undergo are almost too terrible to tell. One of the most 
common is to make in the small of the back an arrow-shaped 
incision ; then fastening into each end of a long scarf the 
prickly cactus stems, they scourge themselves with them, 
throwing the scarf ends first over one shoulder, then over the 
other, each time hitting the bleeding wound. The leaves of 
the yucca or " soap weed " are pounded into a pulp and made 
into a sort of sponge, acrid and inflaming ; a man carries this 
along in a pail of water, and every now and then wets the 
wound with it to increase the pain and the flowing of the blood. 
Almost naked, lashing themselves in this way, they run wildly 
over the plains. Their blood drops on the ground at every 
step. A fanatical ecstasy possesses them ; they seem to feel 
no fatigue ; for three days and two nights they have been 
known to keep it up without rest. 

" Others bind the thick lobes of the prickly pear under 
their arms and on the soles of their feet, and run for miles, 
swinging their arms and stamping their feet violently on the 
ground. To one who knows what suffering there is from 
even one of these tiny little spines imbedded in the flesh, it 
seems past belief that a man could voluntarily endure such 
pain. 



THE NEW WEST. 63 

-Others lie on the thresholds of the churches, and every 
person who enters the church is asked to step with his full 
weight on their bodies. Others carry about heavy wooden 
crosses (eight or ten feet long), so heavy that a man can 
hardlv lift them. Some crawl on their hands and knees. 
dragging the cross. Crowds of women accompany them, 
Binding and shouting. When the penitent throws himself 
on & the ground, they lay the cross on his breast and fall on 
their knees around him and pray ; then they rise up, place 
the cross on his back again, and take up the dreadful journey. 
Now and then the band will enter a house and eat a little 
food, which in all good Catholic houses is kept ready for 
them. After a short rest the leader gives a signal, and they 

set out again. . 

» Last spring, in the eighteen hundred and seventy-sixtn 
year of our merciful Lord, four of these young men died from 
the effects of their tortures. One of them, after running for 
three days under the cactus scourge, lay all Easter night 
naked upon the threshold of a church. Easter morning he 
was found there dead." 

There are some who would pity these people if they 
lived on some distant continent ; but as it is, they 
think little more about them than they do about the 
pagan temples the Chinese are erecting in America, or 
the ignorance of millions of blacks deaf with the crack 
of the slave whip. For the most part, however, we 
believe, that, where the facts are known, men have 
pity upon their own neighbors. That a pure Gospel 
should be preached in Mexico, and in New Mexico, is a 
duty near at hand. In fulfilling this duty, it is a prac- 
tical step to aid in founding Colorado College ; which 
is not far distant ; and which is already making defi- 
nite plans to enter on this missionary field by such in- 
strumentalities as fall within its proper province,— 
preparing the way for teachers and preachers, both 
American and of Spanish descent, and training the 
men for their work. 



64 THE NEW WEST. 

Colorado College is not only upon the very verge of 
the frontier, in the first battle line of the Home Mis- 
sionary Society, but there is no college in the country 
so near foreign missionary service as this, with thirty 
thousand neighbors in the same State, speaking a for- 
eign tongue, practicing the rites of a strange religion,, 
with lives little guided by the principles of the Gos- 
pel ; and in territory a little farther south — made near 
by business connections, — a hundred thousand more, 
clamoring to become a State. Let us put money into 
foreign missions, but not forget this foreign fragment 
of our own Republic. 

There are several men now studying for the Chris- 
tian ministry, in Colorado College. Is there not money 
enough to put a strong home missionary force into 
these papal sections ? Are the sons of the Pilgrims 
lacking in enterprise ? Providence opens the door ; 
do we fumble in our pockets, think we cannot afford to 
pay the fee,j3r send the money somewhere else, and 
keep out of the best missionary work in the country 
at the very moment in which our labor will tell the 
most for our Master ? 

" Civilization must go as yeast, not as bread," says 
an eminent preacher. Plant a Christian college in the 
New West, and it will raise new life in an effete civili- 
zation, where men put their teeth to a stone in place 
of the bread of life. There is just as good prospect 
that the Spanish-speaking people of America will be 
prepared for Christian citizenship as that the promises 
of God will be fulfilled. We shall not always hear men 
asserting that Mexico has had fifty-six revolutions in 
fifty-six years, 1 and that seven eighths of her population 
cannot read. If there is in America a Christian republic, 

1 Rev. Arthur Mitchell, in S. S. World. 



THE NEW WEST. 65 

it surely ought to send the Bible to Mexico, and there 
erect the Christian school. The essential instrument 
is the one which God has always used, — Christian edu- 
cation to kindle the holy fire. Has the fire gone out 
in New England along the Atlantic slope, and in the 
valley of the Mississippi ? We send men to every part 
of the world, and they prove great powers for the re- 
o-eneration of nations. Cannot all the Christian force 
in America redeem America? May we not at the 
least establish a small Christian college, which will 
grow into a great power for good at the front of our 
home mission field, and in the immediate neighborhood 
of foreign populations needing the Gospel ? 

In every age of history God has used young men in 
their school days for achieving great results. The early 
prophets received instruction. Paul was a learned man ; 
the church Fathers were good students. The enthusi- 
asm of their youth was tempered by careful studies, and 
they became men fit to sit on thrones in the kingdom 
of our Lord. D'Aubigne affirms that the German Refor- 
mation was born in the universities. The English Ref^ 
ormation was cradled in colleges, and nurtured by 
scholarly men. Ranke's " History of the Popes " states 
that Austria was at one time nearly Protestant, but the 
Jesuits- obtained a hold in the universities and swung 
back the nation to papal influence. The most vital 
movements of the modern world have begun in Chris- 
tian seminaries. 

John Wesley — who was God's instrument to set 
strongminded and consecrated shoemakers and black- 
smiths to preaching the Gospel to the poor — had also 
the discretion to remain ten years in his Oxford fellow- 
ship, that he might fire the young men with his own 



66 THE NEW WEST. 

spirit. " Is it not," he asked, " a more extensive bene- 
fit to sweeten the fountain than to purify a particular 
stream?" The American Home Missionary Society 
began in the conversations of Andover students. May 
not the students of some Western college, obscure as 
Andover was once, inaugurate new enterprises for the 
Master ? The American Board of Foreign Missions was 
begun by the students of a very small college, praying 
under a haystack. May not the students of a feeble 
college, who pray nightly under the shadow of the 
Colorado mountains, achieve something honorable ? 
Every Christian college ought to become a fountain of 
holy fire, illuminating the third part of a continent; 
and it will, if it is sufficiently endowed with the money 
and the prayers of God's people, and the Power from 
on High. George Fox said that every true Quaker 
ought to shake the country for ten miles around him. 
If Colorado College is true to its position and to its 
consecration, is it too much to hope that it will make 
itself felt, not only in Colorado, but in the region south 
and southwest of it, and that it will aid in preparing 
the way of our Lord ? 

Agesilaus the Great, being asked how far the bounds 
of Sparta extended, shook his spear, and answered, 
"As far as this will reach." The true heritage of 
Christian education depends on how far its spear can 
penetrate. Judson, the missionary, believed in a bold, 
aggressive policy, to arouse and keep alive the benev- 
olent spirit of the churches. A bold, aggressive policy 
has money in it. Practically wise and energetic busi- 
ness men favor wise and energetic efforts to plant the 
Gospel and Christian education in new fields. 

The Christian people of Colorado entertain a strong 
conviction that trained bands must be sent into every 



THE NEW WEST. 67 

part of the New West, in the early development of 
the regions beyond. Without extended missionary 
journeys, the highway will not be opened for the King 
of Glory to come in. But the country cannot be pen- 
etrated everywhere by preaching tours, unless men 
adapted to the work are trained upon the field. This 
is evident from the fact that there are so many re- 
gions that have not been explored by men from the 
East. The plan of the American Board is to establish 
a few churches, and then a training school as a centre 
of light and influence. This has been substantially the 
course on the home missionary field. No other plan 
will do the work ; first a handful of churches, then the 
Christian College. This course is absolutely essential 
in the New West. Professor Stowe compares the 
Christian College to an engine, so essential is it to 
move the machinery of a Christian civilization. Paddle 
wheels are of no use without the engine. Civilization 
will stand still without the engine. 1 And the engine 
to do the work of the New West will do no good if 
set up on the banks of the Connecticut. 

There are great numbers of villages in the New West 
where there is a liquor saloon for every one or two hun- 
dred inhabitants, and one or more dance-houses to 
every five hundred, and preaching of the Gospel at very 
rare intervals. Apply this rule to any eastern village, 
and the result will be easily forecast. The barbarians 
who destroyed Rome were multiplying and growing 
strong in the North of Europe, during the same centu- 
ries in which the Romans were rolling up wealth on the 
shores of the Tiber. We can, if we will, rear ignorant 
and powerful States in our wild Western country ; and 
some day they will destroy the nation. 

This business of planting Christian churches and the 



68 



THE NEW WEST. 



Christian College must be clone at once ; they cannot 
wait one for the other, " any more than one leg can 
be waiting for the other, when a man is on a rapid 
march." 1 

1 Professor Stowe, College Society Address. 



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IV. 

There are so many schools in the West bearing the 
time honored name of college or university, that 
friends of education in the East, who have little leisure 
to become personally acquainted with the needs and 
merits of each one in detail, have found it advanta- 
geous to establish a College Society through which to 
assist only those which have a well-grounded claim to 
exist and which prove worthy of aid. The greater 
part of the endowments which enrich a college in the 
process of years are given directly into the hands of 
the trustees. But in the beginning of the life of a col- 
lege it will certainly stand stronger before the public, 
if it has the patronage of a Society which has already 
established several Western colleges of honorable rep- 
utation. 

The American College and Education Society has 
adopted Colorado College as one of its beneficiaries, 
and it needs the gifts of Christian men and women for 
its up-building. This Society has a noble history, and 
merits the confidence of the Christian public. It has 



70 THE NEW WEST. 

been already honored by the churches, in being made 
the channel through which they have given nearly a 
million and one fourth for colleges, and half a million 
dollars more than that to aid young men. The amount 
invested is small, the result large, — aid rendered seven- 
teen Christian colleges and seminaries, and between 
six and seven thousand young men assisted in their 
preparation for the ministry. 

" Each institution which applies for aid is subjected to 
rigid examination as to its origin and location, the princi- 
ples upon which it was founded, its means of self-support, 
its relations to similar institutions, and its prospective 
usefulness." l The refusal of the Society, based on good 
reasons, to indorse a Western college, prevents the 
Christian public from being imposed upon. It aids no 
college except under conditions which careful business 
men, acting with extreme caution, consider to be wise. 
As a rule no Eastern money goes into buildings. The 
College must be begun without the aid of the Society ; 
it must territorially occupy a sufficient field, without 
near neighbors. The College is pledged to maintain for- 
ever a Christian character and influence in considera- 
tion of the aid rendered. Aid is continued long enough 
to put the College into such a condition as will insure 
an honorable future, if the management of its affairs 
continues to commend it to the Christian public. The 
colleges under the care of the Society, had, in 1872, 
increased their net resources from three hundred thou- 
sand to three millions of dollars. The plans of the 
Society " admit of neither waste nor failure. It takes 
up no doubtful institution. It leaves none half able to 
take care of itself. Its cooperation is pledge of char- 
acter and success." 2 No worthy institution is pre- 

1 Fifth Report, College Society. 

2 Thirtieth Report, College Society. 



THE NEW WEST. 71 

maturely abandoned, any more than wise men would 
leave an arch without a key-stone, or a temple without 
a roof. 1 

We submit that this work is not second in impor- 
tance to any in the country, and that it ought to re- 
ceive the hearty and systematic support of all our 
churches and private Christians. And we are confident 
that, so far as the facts are known, Christian men will 
delight to use this Society in doing good. Many have 
not given much thought to it, and, therefore, little 
money to it, If they once weigh the work, they will 
be glad to give liberally through this channel. The 
establishment of any one college, however important, is 
not any considerable part of its work. It is making a 
chain of them in the West, Without the sound of ham- 
mer to attract the attention of the world, it is silently 
building temples of Christian learning, whose glory will 
appear in after ages. This Society can, says Dr. Hop- 
kins, 2 " appeal only to thoughtful men of large views, 
and willing to wait. It is the glory and hope of the 
country that there are in it so many such men who 
can be thus appealed to. In my judgment, the coun- 
try has no greater benefactors than those who have 
thus aided in erecting these fortresses of Christianity 
and civilization, so that the two may march on together 
and take secure possession of the land. I know of no 
better use of money than to secure instruction for all 
time in some great branch of study that shall enter in 
as a part of the best system that can be devised for 
training men. Nothing on earth is so high as man, 
and the grandest work we can do, and the best for the 
country, is to lift him up to a higher manhood." 



1 Sixteenth Report, College Society. 

2 College Society Address. 



72 THE NEW WEST. 

Colorado College has had the fortune not uncom- 
monly incident to the beginning of important enter- 
prises. The school was opened in 1874, under a very 
enthusiastic, hard-working financial agent, and first one 
excellent teacher, then another. It was then suspended; 
and it lived only in the prayers and hopes of a handful 
of Christian people. This was the first endowment, the 
prayers of God's people. By the timely gifts of a few 
men in Massachusetts, who were also praying for the 
coming of the divine kingdom, new life was put into 
the work. 

The Colorado Springs Company has made a royal 
gift of more than fifty acres of their best land to the 
College, and they reserve forty acres more to be given 
when a certain endowment is secured. The land is in 
part for the campus, but enough may be sold for the 
endowment to net from twenty to twenty-five thousand 
dollars. What has been already done by the Colorado 
Springs people, in the land and in a building subscrip- 
tion, falls little short of fifty thousand dollars. The 
townspeople — with one generous friend in Chicago — 
are erecting a stone structure, which when finished 
will be one of the most comely and convenient college 
buildings in the country. It will be of a pink, volcanic 
limestone, with white trimmings. The central portion 
was begun upon the Fourth of July, 1877, and it will 
be completed before the Fall Term of 1878. The re- 
mainder of the building will be erected as soon as the 
wants of the pupils require it. The most careful and 
most enterprising business men in the State are active 
members of the board of trustees. The grade of stud- 
ies is equal to that in the best eastern colleges. The 
professors engaged in teaching, or preparing to give 
instruction in some specialty, are eminent for scholar- 
ship, as well as men of earnest Christian life. Young 



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THE NEW WEST. 75 

men and women from all the region are entering the 
classes, and the needs are pressing for additional facil- 
ities for giving; instruction. 

There are twenty-five thousand children of school age 
in Colorado, and they need a Christian college. 1 In that 
part of the State south of the Divide — an upland ridge 
that makes out eastward from the mountains a little 
south of Denver, — a population, probably numbering 
seventy thousand, has no public school of high school 
grade, according to the Eastern standard. They need 
the advantages offered by the Preparatory Department 
of Colorado College. The public schools are, however, 
rapidly improving, and several schools that now rise 
little above grammar grade, will soon be in condition to 
fit pupils for college. The Episcopalians have a board- 
ing-school of high school grade for boys at Golden, and 
for girls at Denver. The State University has recently 
opened with a Normal Department, at Boulder, a hun- 
dred miles north of Colorado College. The Christian 
people of the State will cooperate with this work in 
in every way possible. It is clearly for the interest of 
the State that provision should be made for the higher 
education of youth. It is, however, for the interest of 
the pupils, — and through them of the State, — that 
they be trained under a distinctively Christian influence. 
It is, moreover, believed that a self-perpetuating board 
of trustees, selected with sole reference to their fitness 
for their trust, is more likely to command confidence, 
and to manage college affairs wisely, than men chosen 
by popular vote, as the State constitution of Colorado 
indicates that the regents of her University shall be 
elected. There is a strong feeling in favor of uniting 
upon one college. The policy of the American Col- 
lege and Education Society is recognized as broad and 

1 There are as many more in New Mexico, and almost as many more in 
Utah ; and they need the influences that will flow out from a Christian college. 



76 THE NEW WEST. 

liberal, and its colleges as unsectarian as any in the 
country. This Society takes a pledge of the trustees 
that the college shall never come under political or ec- 
clesiastical control. The policy of the Society is shown 
by a brief extract from a valuable paper published by 
the honored Secretary of the Society in the " Congre- 
gationalism" February 6, 1878 : — 

" The American Education Society, organized sixty- 
two years ago, and which has done a larger work in 
this department, probably, than any other among us, 
has been unsectarian from the beginning unto this clay. 
Though its funds and its students are drawn chiefly 
from Congregational sources, there has never been a 
year since its origin that it has not had upon its lists 
young men of other denominations — Baptists, Metho- 
dists, Presbyterians, German Reformed, Lutherans, etc. 
A young man was graduated from Amherst College 
last summer, the son of a Methodist minister, himself 
preparing to be a Methodist minister, and known to be 
so, who was helped through his whole college course 
by this society. Nor was this a strange and isolated 
case. There are several hundreds of similar cases. 
Rev. Baron Stow, D. D., one of the more prominent 
Baptist ministers of the country, now deceased, was 
aided through his education by this Society. Heidel- 
berg College, Ohio, is a German Reformed institution. 
But because the religious body to which it belonged 
was not rich, the American Education Society, between 
thirty and forty years ago, took it upon its list, and has 
continued to this day to help young men there needing 
assistance in their studies for the ministry. This was a 
purely charitable, Christian work, from which no finan- 
cial return, or denominational return, has ever been 
expected. In other words, the Society has been con- 
cerned in raising up thoroughly educated ministers, 
without stopping anxiously to inquire whether they 



THE NEW WEST. 77 

should turn out Congregational ministers, or should be 
of some other religious order." 

The same catholicity of spirit has manifested itself 
in the collegiate department of the Society. Presby- 
terian and Lutheran colleges have been aided ; if 
others have not shared its bounty, it has been because 
they have not sought it. And, in accord with this 
breadth of Christian benevolence, the colleges built up 
by this Society have made it a point to place the rep- 
resentatives of different denominations upon boards of 
trust and in chairs of instruction. It is a part of their 
working theory that a liberal policy is more likely to 
win the respect of thoughtful men, and result in build- 
ing up colleges which will meet the wants of the pub- 
lic, than if a narrow sectarian course is pursued. If 
these colleges are not unsectarian, it is certain that in 
them the evils of sectarianism are reduced to a mini- 
mum. Colorado College, in its management, com- 
mends itself to leading Christian men of different de- 
nominations in the State, and it will receive their 
hearty support. Its aim is to meet the wants of all 
Christian families, and to merit the patronage of the 
more than six score Christian churches, for the higher 
education of their children. 




V. 



It cannot be safely affirmed that it is too early to 
plant a college in the New West, since we are never 
weary of boasting that Harvard College was begun 
when there were only from twenty to thirty houses in 
Boston. We glory in the men who said that they could 
" not subsist without a college," when they had not 
more than twenty-five beginnings of towns in Massa- 
chusetts. We cannot " subsist without a college " 
in Colorado. Thirty-nine years after Harvard was 
founded, the population of all New England was only 
thirty-nine per cent, of the present population of Col- 
orado ; and the population of all the colonies was only 
twenty-six per cent, of the population of the' New 
West. If our fathers could " not subsist without a col- 
lege," Colorado has nearly three times the need Massa- 
chusetts had of Harvard forty years after it was 
founded ; and the New West to-day has four times as 
much need of a Christian college as all the colonies 
had when Harvard was two score years old. The only 
way for Colorado and the New West to found a Chris- 
tian college is to do as the men of Massachusetts did 
for Harvard. They went to England to beg money, 



THE NEW WEST. 79 

and the Englishmen gave it. To-day the New West is 
a beggar at the doors of those who are now reaping 
the benefit of English benefactions two hundred years 
ago. Let gratitude for the past take substantial shape 
at this hour in planting Colorado College. 

Harvard College was established only eighteen years 
after the landing at Plymouth, and six years after the 
founding; of Boston. Colorado has been settled more 
than eighteen years. Massachusetts had a college be- 
fore it had a grammar school. It was eleven years 
after the college began that provision was made for 
grammar schools to fit pupils for the university. 

Yale College was founded when the population of 
Connecticut was only twenty-one per cent, of the pres- 
ent population of Colorado, and the population of Mas- 
sachusetts was only one half that of Colorado. But 
those wise men said they must have another college, 
and they went to England begging ; and the men who 
had grown up under the shadows of Oxford and Cam- 
bridge gave them money. Colorado needs a college 
five times as much as Connecticut did Yale at the time 
it was begun. For nineteen years Yale College had 
no building of its own. Colorado College has already 
shown energy enough to erect a wooden building and 
outgrow it, and the people on the ground are, at this 
moment, expending more than ten thousand dollars on 
the main block of a beautiful building for the infant 
college. 

Yale College was begun by the gathering of a hand- 
ful of books by a few pastors, who desired to perpetu- 
ate an educated ministry. Dartmouth was a charity 
school established in the woods. Amherst not long 
since had a senior class of two. Those men are wise — 
the founders of a noble Christian influence to be per- 
petuated as long as the earth wheels around the sun — 



80 THE NEW WEST. 

who give the money needful to establish the feeble 
beginnings of those Christian colleges fostered by the 
American College and Education Society. 

The fathers of New England thought it best to 
found colleges when the population was sparse, and 
when the people were poor ; and they did it with little 
idea of the future growth of the nation. The Massa- 
chusetts Bay men decided that the population was 
never likely to be very dense west of Newton. The 
founders of Lynn exploring ten or fifteen miles, doubted 
whether the country was good for anything further 
west than that. I suspect that they loved the sea, and 
deemed life of no value out of the sight and the sound 
of it. But they wanted a college ; and Old England 
said they ought to have one, and paid cash down on 
the words. We go to men, to-day, who believe that 
our country is likely to be settled west of Newton ; 
and they believe in the manifest destiny of the nation ; 
and they know that the New West will have a large 
population in the near future ; and they know that the 
planting of a Christian college is the only possible 
power by which to fortify a Christian stronghold in 
that region, — and they will give most generously the 
small amount that is needed in these first years of Col- 
orado College. 

The extent to which our early colleges depended on 
the aid of the mother country is not commonly known 
by those who refuse to give to a college two thousand 
miles west of them, although they are themselves in- 
debted to men three thousand miles east of them for 
the higher education, which now illuminates the path- 
way of their children. It would be possible to fill 
pages with the record. The name of Thomas Hollis is. 
not less honorable than that of the scholars who de- 
rived advantage from his princely gifts. The worship- 




NEAR MANITOU MINERAL SPRINGS. 



THE NEW WEST. 83 

pers in the chapel built by Madam Holden, were be- 
holden to her as truly as to the preacher. Hugh Peters 
did valiant service for Harvard College as he did for 
Cromwell. William Pennoyer is not in itself a name to 
attract notice ; but he has been aiding poor students at 
Harvard for more than two hundred years, as if he 
were living in Cambridge, century after century, and 
dealing out money to help worthy young men through 
college. When Lady Moulson gave a hundred pounds 
to this college over sea, she purchased for herself the 
gratitude of students during two hundred thirty years 
past, and thousands of years to come. Henry Henley, 
of Dorsetshire, might have given twenty-seven pounds 
for a gravestone, and it would have crumbled ; but his 
name is now read and honored, after two hundred 
years, by most scholarly men in America, and it will 
be transmitted till the world grows old, and Harvard 
Square makes room for Mount Auburn. 

The first printing press of America, north of Mex- 
ico, was the gift of certain gentlemen in Amsterdam to 
Harvard College ; and Joseph Glover, of England, gave 
the type. 

Very few persons know that Elihu Yale was Gov- 
ernor of the East India Company, but there is no part 
of the civilized world that fails to honor him for his gifts 
to the college in New Haven. Among the most pre- 
cious gifts, to this college in the wilderness, were books 
from Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Richard Steele, Rev. Mat- 
thew Henry, Dr. Isaac Watts, Bishop Berkley, John 
Erskine, and other eminent men. 

The College of New Jersey obtained very large sums 
in England, beyond all expectation of the parties in- 
terested. The treasurer's books are lost, but President 
Davies collected in one visit twelve hundred pounds. 

Dr. Wheelock, of Dartmouth, obtained funds from 



84 THE NEW WEST. 

the Prince of Orange, and officials in high station in 
the Netherlands. The Earl of Dartmouth, and other 
Englishmen, took the deepest interest in his work, and 
gave largely. 

Our colleges have been from the beginning a set of 
learned beggars. There is a Brotherhood of Mendi- 
cants at this time in America, hailing from the West, 
pleading at the doors of the rich and the large-hearted 
in the East. My friend Dr. Morrison, of Drury, says, 
" Do not call us Presidents, but Beggars, — College 
Beggars." 

The Lord of Hosts is not weary of hearing the pite- 
ous cry of beggars on the earth. We are all suppliants. 
God give us what we need, and let us turn no deaf ear 
to any who come to us as we go to Him, Christ is not 
impatient of perpetual prayers. Dr. Kirk loved to be 
called upon by Christ in the person of his poor. As a 
matter of honor, let us at the least be patient if a col- 
lege beggar rings the door-bell, and asks us to do for 
some Western college what our ancestors asked Old 
England to do for them. 

There is a perpetual law of increase, which puts 
great dignity upon small gifts to a worthy institution 
of learning. A handful of poor students gathered in a 
barn at Cambridge, and the University has flourished 
century after century ; lines of kings have reigned a 
little while and given place to others, but the line of 
scholars, earnestly searching for truth and nobly con- 
tending;; for it, has not failed, nor will until the brine of 
British seas ceases to be salt. When a university is 
once rooted, if it has in its own character the right to 
live, it is little more likely to be torn up than the 
Church of the living God. 

•' Every founded institution, especially every one 



THE NEW WEST. 85 

which is founded on a principle and not on a tradition, 
which holds an idea within it, and does not simply 
shelter an interest, shows a tendency to grow ; to be- 
come developed from a less to a larger, and to grow 
compact aucl copious with years. If it be reared to 
consult mere commercial or political advantage, this 
may not be. If it be founded to gratify pride, to put 
the crown upon personal ambition, or even to subserve 
the mere convenience of society, this will not be. But 
if it be founded on a permanent demand of human 
nature itself, and be intrinsically adapted to that, this 
tendency is as certain as that of the date-fruit to grow 
into a palm, and will be as permanent as the fitness of 
the institution to accomplish its ends. And in no case 
is this exemplified more fully than in that of the Col- 
lege." 1 

Princeton College would not, however, have received 
the munificent gifts which have made her so rich in 
recent years, — a single donor bestowing upon her 
seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, — if she 
had not had a definite beginning in a log-hut a hun- 
dred and forty years ago. 2 For more than a hundred 
years the College was poor, a charity fund of twelve 
thousand dollars being its only endowment, If the 
Christian people of the East will put in the foundations 
of a Christian College in the New West, it will be in 
position to receive benefit from the law of increase, 
and the little wooden building where the students now 
meet will become historic. 

i R. S. Storrs, LL. U., College Society Address. 

2 The. learned historian of the College of New Jersey may deny Prince- 
ton's connection with the logs, — and most likely he is right, — but that hut 
twenty feet square has a place in the popular imagination; and it will be as 
hard for him to remove it from the history of this revered college, as it is 
to displace William Tell from the minds of men. 



86 THE NEW WEST. 

The churches in Colorado are poor ; but they give 
for Christian purposes on a scale of generosity quite 
unknown by the average church member in the East. 
As a class those who attend upon Christian worship, 
even if they are not church members, are public spir- 
ited, and heroic in bearing heavy burdens and aiding 
every good cause. Every denomination in the New 
West has a severe struggle in carrying on its work. 
Very few churches are self-sustaining. And it is always 
true in a new country that it takes time for the Gos- 
pel to make itself felt as a moulding power in society. 
It is impossible to build up a college without Eastern 
aid. All will hail with gladness any gifts which will 
make it possible for the poor to educate their children 
in Colorado, and to train the men needed for this vast 
mission field. " Ships are first built, and then sent on 
voyages," says Mr. Beecher, " but Western States are 
as if men were rafted to sea with materials, and were 
obliged to build the ship under them while they 
sailed ; yea, and to grapple in desperate conflict with 
piratical errors and red rovers of ignorance, while yet 
they are laying down the decks and setting up the rig- 
ging." x Nearly all the ready money in a new State is 
used in developing the country, in making the phys- 
ical basis for society. This is necessarily so. But as 
the years go by, many of the investments will return, 
and churches and seminaries of learning will be less 
dependent upon the older civilization. 

The amount of money needed to put a Christian 
college upon a good foundation, and to place it in po- 
sition to take advantage of the law of increase, is not 
relatively large. Williams College has made itself felt 
with great power in the moral world, and her fifteen 
hundred graduates in sixty years have borne an hon- 

1 College Society Address. 



THE NEW WEST. 87 

.arable part in national history. Yet her capital was 
not during any part of that time more than fifty thou- 
sand dollars. 1 With one or two hundred thousand 
dollars cash capital a college can do good work ; and, 
as the years go by, it will grow under the law of in- 
crease. It is the privilege of donors to the American 
College and Education Society to render such aid that, 
with the gifts of local friends, the college will certainly 
go forward with increasing power in future ages. The 
pledge of the trustees binding their successors, in con- 
sideration of these early gifts of Christian men, to 
maintain a Christian institution, is a pledge of far 
reaching influence, since, after the first generations, the 
college will from time to time by the law of increase 
receive the appointments of a university. 

The silver and the gold belong to Him who rules 
the world, and it is not difficult for Him to honor in- 
strumentalities that honor Him. Consecrated gold from 
the Colorado Mountains will enlarge and beautify her 
Christian College. Oxford and Cambridge have been 
built up by private gifts. The capitalists who coin 
money in the New West will gladly aid in upbuilding 
institutions of learning. In the first four years of the 
present decade, thirty-three million dollars were given 
by private donors to the higher education in the United 
States! Men who are enriched by scientific research, 
love to bestow monev on deserving colleges. Colorado 
College, which now rejoices greatly over a few pounds 
of butter or one or two sheep, as Harvard was formerly 
made glad by pecks of corn, will, we believe, some day 
become rich as Harvard with money by the million. 

In no way is Colorado College likely to be benefited 
so immediately and so largely as by the interest which 

1 Dr. Hopkins, College Society Address, l$i>2. 



88 THE NEW WEST. 

public spirited men will take in endowing a depart- 
ment of Natural History, when they once become ac- 
quainted with the necessity for scientific studies in the 
New West, and the rare facilities there offered for their 
successful pursuit. 

Broad minded men will easily see how needful is 
scientific investigation to give a proportionate culture 
to students preparing for the Christian ministry. A 
half educated clergyman is nowhere more out of place 




Ciikyexne Canon. 



than in a mining country ; in a region where multi- 
tudes are drawn together by gilt edged sermons in 
stones. Narrowness, conceit, and ignorance cannot 
hope to attract thoughtful men who earn their living 
by being experts in science. Is it said that the man 
of God must make short school clays in a new country ? 
Unless his schooling is long enough to teach him to 
open his eyes and read God's revelation in the natural 



THE NEW WEST. 89 

world, he will never be fit for his work. It is to the 
■credit of the American Board of Foreign Missions that 
so many men have been sent abroad, who have made 
important contributions to scientific knowledge. Carl 
Ritter valued the "Missionary Herald" as a rich store- 
house of scientific, historical, and antiquarian knowl- 
edge ; Humboldt also read it with constant interest. 
Have not the Home Missionary Societies sent to the 
front men of character and culture, who have founded 
schools of learning in every new State ? Colorado Col- 
lege will not be a suitable place in which to train home 
missionaries, unless it is thoroughly equipped in its 
Department of Natural History. Clergymen must be 
subjected to a discipline so well proportioned, that the 
college, which serves them, will also attract students 
who desire to prepare themselves for other callings in 
life. Will not men of native refinement and liberal 
culture, who gather wealth from the mines of the New 
West, be swift to connect their names with endow- 
ments for Natural Science in Colorado College ? The 
location is one of the best in the world for establish- 
ing a Mining School, whose fame will go out to all the 
world. Will not the name of the far-sighted founder 
of mining instruction in Colorado College be recalled 
with gratitude, during endless generations, by the sci- 
entific students who will live and labor among the 
Colorado mountains ? 

The means for industrial education will certainly 
prove a part of the endowment of any well ordered 
college in the New West. It is essential for aiding 
needy students, for promoting a manly independence, 
for training those who will develop the material inter- 
ests of the country, and for preparing young men, to 
induct semi-barbarous populations into the mysteries of 
civilized life. There are men in the valley of the Mis- 



90 THE NEW WEST. 

sissippi, in the East, in England, upon the continent 
of Europe, who have amassed wealth by iron working, 
by manufacturing machinery, or dry goods by machin- 
ery, or by traffic in the results of skilled labor, who 
appreciate the importance of training intelligent youth 
in schools of design, and in handling tools ; and they 
will be glacl to found in the New West an education 
which will enrich the country through the skilled labor 
of the bright and energetic sons of pioneers. 

The great plains and mountain regions of western 
America offer to-day the most attractive resort in the 
world to the student of geology. Colorado College is 
surrounded by the most remarkable formations on the 
continent. The telegraph has been busy in announcing 
the important discoveries of new fossils in this region, 
— discoveries which have attracted great attention in 
Europe, and which have led, at least, one eminent sa- 
vant to cross the Atlantic to examine these treasures 
from the Rocky Mountain plateau. Unknown species 
of animals and plants are so abundant, that Professor 
Cope has obtained from the ancient sea and lake de- 
posits of western Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and 
Idaho, nearly three hundred and fifty species of verte- 
brate animals, of which he has made known to science 
for the first time more than two hundred species. One 
summer yielded to him one hundred new species. In- 
credible numbers of fossils — monkey, snake, lizard, 
tiger, turtle, rhinoceros — indicate a great harvest, if 
trained men are put into the field. Birds with teeth 
and strange creatures excite the surprise of scientific 
men. Kansas has yielded thirty species of saurians 
within a few years ; all Europe, sixteen in a century. 
The researches of Professor Marsh have made a new 
era in paleontology. When the New West is as syste- 
matically explored as Europe, which has been overrun 



THE NEW WEST. 91 

with such minuteness by competent geologists, the re- 
sults will prove a most important contribution to the 
scientific knowledge of the world. But the New West 
is of so great extent that it will be difficult to com- 
plete the work by brief excursions of savants from the 
East. Capable men should be trained in the very re- 
gion where the service is to be rendered. Professor 
Kerr, of Colorado College, has found saurian remains 
within three miles of his class room. The area of 
country close at hand is also rich in fossil plants, a 
large number of which are new. It is no wonder that 
college students and their professors from the East visit 
this region for summer studies. There is no better 
location in which to remain, if they wish to pursue out- 
of-door work in geology. 

The study of stratified geology can be carried on in no 
part of America to so good advantage as within five 
miles of Colorado College. At Colorado Springs, says 
Professor Hayden, 1 " there is an area of about ten 
miles square that contains more material of geological 
interest than any other area of equal extent that I 
have seen in the West." 2 " To the geologist Colorado 
is almost encyclopedic in its character, containing with- 
in its borders nearly every variety of geological forma- 

1 Preliminary Field Report, page 4. 

2 Formations in Azoic time are seen in Williams' Canon, five miles from 
the College. 

In Paleozoic time there are sections of Silurian beds in the same locality, 
resting on the granite, also in Glen Eyrie and Cheyenne Canon. The 
Carboniferous period is illustrated in a short belt north of Manitou; fossil 
plants are found. 

In Mesozoic time, the Triassic formation appears in the Garden of the 
Gods, the belt running north; a parallel Jurassic belt is found at short 
distance east of it. Colorado Springs is built upon the Cretaceous forma- 
tion; fossils abundant. 

Austin's Bluffs, east of the College, illustrate Cenozoic time. — From 
article in " Colorado Springs Gazette,'''' baaed on Hat/den's Map. 



92 THE NEW WEST. 

tion. 1 Southwestern Colorado is a region of remark- 
able interest. When the Colorado River region be- 
comes familiar to the eye and to the hammer of 
science, and all the treasures of this wild West are 
made known, there will be fewer imperfections in the 
geological record. There is a noble future for the 
scientific students of the New West, as they trace 
the events in the history of the globe. 

It would not be difficult to indicate the interest of 
the botanist in the new world of living and of fossil 
plants revealed in the far West. Some of the fossils 
are of remarkable beauty. 

It is stated upon good authority that the tertiary 
strata of the Rocky Mountain plateau are richer in fos- 
sil insects than any other country in the world. An- 
cient centipedes, bees, and butterflies, and a vast 
variety of flying and creeping things in stone, are 
gathered by learned Professors, as eagerly as boys 
chase living; butterflies. 

And it is in this very region, that astronomical obser- 
vations can be conducted under peculiarly favorable 
conditions. The most eminent astronomers are of the 
opinion that our knowledge of the heavenly bodies 
would be vastly increased by planting one of the best 
telescopes in the world upon some mountain plateau, 
in a clear atmosphere, and where the sky is free from 
clouds the greater portion of the year. It seemed at 
one time as if the project to establish an observatory 
upon the Sierra Nevada was likely to meet this want ; 
but Mr. Lick's gift will now enrich the University of 
California upon the coast. Colorado Springs is six 
thousand feet above the sea, and it is easy to find in 
the neighborhood a higher altitude, if it be desirable, 
where the conditions of climate are most favorable. 

1 Hay den, Preliminary Field Report, page 4. 



M I 



fit * * 

in 











2111 



^OX#;fe;;-.f.,:* : .«---'-.'.,/-/v, ' 

, -' ... ' ;,- : 








a* 







CHEYENNE FALLS, NEAR COLORADO SPRINGS. 



THE NEW WEST. 95 

So important is dryness of climate and purity of at- 
mosphere for the best astronomical work that two em- 
inent French scientists have selected a station in the 
New West, to observe this } r ear's transit of Mercury. 
A world-wide fame is awaiting the man, who will so 
endow the astronomical department of Colorado Col- 
lege that the observatory which bears his name will 
make the most brilliant discoveries the world has 
known. 

Colorado College is, therefore, in every respect well 
located for deriving early advantage from the law of 
increase, through the interest of donors who desire to 
promote the study of natural science. Persons of 
wealth who derive advantage from the Colorado cli- 
mate, as well as those who have made satisfactory in- 
vestments in the business enterprises of the country, 
will be quick to discern the advantages of the situation 
for building up an institution of learning. Somewhere 
in the great central regions of America there will be 
a university town, whose fame will increase with the 
advancing centuries. It is probable that there is no 
point, all things considered, more favorable for such a 
seat of learning than that chosen for Colorado College. 

The. endowment papers of Colorado College have 
been most carefully drawn by that eminent legal ad- 
viser and princely founder of a Christian college, 
Heis t ry F. Durant. They are guarded at every point, 
to make sure that the money is used as the donors 
desire. An agreement is entered into between the 
College and the American College and Education 
Society and the donors, by which the money is given 
to the Society in trust for the College, to be used to 
promote Christian education in Colorado. The Society 
reserves the riyrht to cniarcl the investments of the 



96 THE NEW WEST. 

money given to the College in trust by the Society. 
The teachers are to be Christian men. Biblical instruc- 
tion is to be furnished. The scope of the College con- 
templates the highest and broadest culture, — educa- 
tion fit for men as well as for boys. It also makes 
provision for the gradual growth of a training school 
for home missionaries. Two thirds of the trustees 
must be of Christian membership. One of the officers 
of the American College and Education Society must 
be a perpetual trustee of the College. If the college 
property is turned over to any differently chartered in- 
stitution, or loses its franchise, or is not faithful to this 
trust, the money reverts to the American College and 
Education Society. Although the work of the College 
Department of the American College and Education 
Society may not be needed in a distant future, there 
will still be necessity for aiding young men in prepar- 
ing for the ministry ; so that this corporation is likely 
to exist as long as the College. Money given to the 
American College and Education Society for Colorado 
College will be as sure to accomplish the end sought 
by the donors as any foresight can make it. Divine 
Providence is just as likely to take care of the trust, if 
the legal instruments are well drawn, as if they were 
prepared carelessly or not prepared at all. 

If any investments are solid and lasting they are 
found in gifts to this Society. " It is putting money 
where the safeguards of law will surround it forever." 1 
"The boards that control such institutions are ordi- 
narily selected for their capacity, intelligence, honesty, 
practical wisdom, and interest in the cause of learning. 
.... The individuals in question are put under the 
guardianship of law and of a watchful community, and 
under all the sanctions that come from the sacredness 

1 II. Q. Butterfield, D. D., Coll. Soc. Rep. 



THE NEW WEST. 97 

of the trust committed to them, a trust that touches 
upon the highest welfare of Church and State, and bears 
not only on the interests of the living age but of gen- 
erations to come." 1 Yale College has never lost a " dol- 
lar committed by any donor for permanent investment." 
So, too, not the smallest donations made to Harvard Col- 
lege in its infancy have been lost sight of; they " are 
at the present moment as secure and remunerative as 
those of yesterday." 2 God does not cease to preserve 
property when it is funded for education. Can we not 
trust Him out of our sight ? 

Nor can it be said that college foundations are liable 
to much perversion. In view of the changes which 
centuries have made in the great universities of Eng- 
land, the Parliamentary Commission expresses its con- 
fidence in the wisdom of these permanent foundations 
by recommending their large increase. The schools are, 
by the law, kept true to the spirit, if not always the 
letter, of the founders. The experience of ages has 
shown that the ideas of the founders have been, to a 
remarkable degree, perpetuated ; nor does any tempo- 
rary change indicate that the trust will not be fulfilled 
as the years go by. " The spirit of the founders of an 
institution is a permanent spirit. . . . The promise is 
not more sure to parents in the training of their children, 
than is the providence of Gocl in regard to the pious 
founders of institutions of learning." 3 The character 
of a Christian college, as it is formed age after age, 
becomes the best security for the right use of donations 
made to it. The presence of the Holy Spirit in the 
world is a factor to be counted on in estimating the 
probability of the moral advancement of mankind. 

1 Twenty-Jirst Report College Society. 

2 Twenty-fourth Coll. Soc. Report. 

3 Fourteenth Report College Society. 



98 THE NEW WEST. 

This Spiritual Presence will uphold the Christian col- 
lege ; and without this preserving energizing Power no 
forms of law can perpetuate vital Christianity. But 
this Power is constantly acting upon the human race, 
surrounding us like the atmosphere we breathe. It is 
proper to place dependence upon this fact. It is, 
therefore, a well grounded faith which says of the 
Christian college : — 

"If it include Christianity at the outset, and be 
framed to express that, then will that probably reign 
in and inspire it, with a power more apparent at some 
times than at others, but real all the time, even unto 
the end. It is not so much the provisions of charters, 
enforced by courts, that will secure this. The self- 
evolving life of the college itself, in the long run, insures 
the result. And, as thus vitally and permanently asso- 
ciated with such centres of power, Christianity will have 
a hold on our country that cannot be paralleled, and 
that never can be shaken. You might as well shake the 
mountain from its base, which is bolted by columns 
and shafts of granite to the centre of the earth." x 

" All things considered," says President Eliot, " there 
is no form of endowment for the benefit of mankind 
more permanent, more secure from abuse, or surer to 
do good, than the endowment of public teaching in a 
well organized institution of learning." 

Sir Henry Maine, in an address before the University 
of Calcutta, gives it as his " fixed opinion that there is 
no surer, no easier, no cheaper road to immortality ; — 
such as can be obtained in this world — than that 
which lies through liberality expending itself in the 
formation of educational endowments." 

There is no way in which a friend of Christ and a 
lover of the human race can so certainly perpetuate 

1 Dr. It. S. Storrs, College Society Address. 



THE NEW WEST. 99 

bis influence in some definite form, easily traced and 
recognized, as by the founding of a Christian college 
in a region and under circumstances where it will be- 
come a great power for good. When men's lives are 
perpetuated in a definite charity, so that they can be 
hailed by name by those who are benefited by it in 
distant ages, their lives at once seem to us the noblei 
while the}' are with us, and their names are taken at 
once out of the obscurity of the common check list or 
tax list and placed upon enduring tablets, which gener- 
ations to come will rise up and honor. " It is only a 
few men of rare discernment .... who can 
look beyond immediate and temporary issues to re- 
mote and permanent results. It is, therefore, simple 
even-handed justice to bestow rare honor on men of 
such rare wisdom and virtue ; to perpetuate their mem- 
ories by making them commensurate with the duration 
of the institutions which they have founded ; to mete 
out to them a height of renown, a breadth of esteem, 
and a depth of veneration corresponding with the 
breadth and length and height and depth of their 
foundations, and the comprehensiveness of views and 
elevation of sentiments by which they were distin- 
guished ; it is right and proper that those who have 
studied and labored and prayed and denied themselves, 
and sacrificed themselves to educate and enrich the 
minds and hearts of many generations, should be en- 
shrined in the grateful and affectionate remembrance 
of men from ao;e to aa;e." 1 

There are single families that could equip a Chris- 
tian college in the West, and set it forward upon a ca- 
reer of usefulness, so long as grass will spring on the 

1 Professor Tyler, Discourse Commemorative of the Hon. Samuel Wil- 

iston. 



100 THE NEW WEST. 

prairies or snow melt on the sides of the mountains. 
" Never lay up money," said the missionary Judson, 
" for yourselves or your families. Trust in God from 
day to clay, and verily you shall be fed." It is impos- 
sible to make provision for families, which will hold for 
any great length of time in America. Even in Eng- 
land, where the descent of property is made a study 
and hedged about by law, the experience of centuries 
shows that the term of a wealthy house is short. It is 
better that the sons of the rich should be self reliant ; if 
they are not, they are not competent to care for prop- 
erty, and soon lose it. There is no such spur as ne- 
cessity. Are there not many households scattered 
throughout the country, which could easily found a 
Christian college, and then have abundance left for the 
next generation of their own kin, so much at least as 
would serve as a capital to be increased if well man- 
aged. If ill managed in the second generation it is 
well if there be not too much to waste. 

A country minister, accustomed to strong language, 
once asserted, that, when the bosom of charity should 
beat a little stronger, men would be found to sell houses 
and farms to promote the salvation of the heathen. 
" The child will sit down and weep, who may not say, 
that his father and mother were the friends of missions. 
And what parent would entail such a curse upon his 
children, and prevent them from lifting up their heads 
in the millennium. I would rather leave mine toiling 
in the ditch, there to enjoy the luxury of reflecting,, 
that a father's charity made them poor. Poor ! They 
are poor who cannot feel for the miseries of a perishing 
world ; to whom God has given abundance, but who 
grudge to use it for His honor. Teach your children 
charity, and they can never be poor." 1 Still, when 

i Daniel A. Clark, D. D. 



THE NEW WEST. 101 

we handle the Word of God, and pray over it, we can 
but rise from our knees and devise charities ; and, if it 
is possible to provide spiritual blessing for half a con- 
tinent through all ages of time, we welcome the privi- 
lege. " I cannot tell you what I have enjoyed. It is 
like being born into the kingdom again." So said one 
who had given fifty thousand dollars cash to found a 
Christian college in a needy Western field. That was 
an hour for mutual congratulation, when a family gath- 
ered to pray over the gift of twenty-five thousand dol- 
lars, invested in a Christian college as a perpetual 
bounty to coming ages. 1 

It is natural for parents to feel that their property 
belongs of right to their children. They have, per- 
haps, struggled for years to earn means for their 
maintenance. Or they have inherited property, which 
they feel it to be a duty to transmit. Providence has 
put it in their power to place their children above care, 
and give them capital for doing business. Their habits 
of caution have been formed by years of anxiety and 
careful saving. They have, moreover, had little defi- 
nite knowledge of the good to be accomplished by 
given charities, and the certainty of bringing about the 
desired result. On the other hand, it seems clear that 
their children will not misuse the property. It is also 
true that the mere habit of holding whatever they get 
is firmly fixed. It is not then strange that a large sum 
is often bequeathed to relatives, who do not really 
need it, which would, if otherwise bestowed, prove a 
fountain of good to the poor of the world during end- 
less generations. 

We are permitted to bear an honorable part in the 
world's salvation. It is possible for any one to multi- 
ply his personal influence, as if he were to become the 

1 First Report, American College and Education Society. 



102 THE NEW WEST. 

spiritual and intellectual parent of thousands of stu- 
dents in future years. Permanent charities, carefully 
guarded, will perpetuate the character and good deeds 
of the donors so long as ships sail the sea. Do we not 
read of a devout man in an Arabian desert, who gave 
a cup of cold water to every man who passed his door ? 
It was to him a precious moment. He delighted in 
doing all the gooc he could every day. But it was 
suggested to him. that, if he would dig a well, his 
beneficence might extend to caravans, which would 
pass that way hundreds of years after his death. Trav- 
elers ready to perish now bless his memory, as they 
quench their thirst at the well-side. Will not those 
families, whose wealth is consecrated to Christ, and 
whose life it is to do good deeds, set apart a portion of 
their property to open a fountain of spiritual life in 
the New West, where it will satisfy the thirsty until 
the mountains crumble ? 

Sir Matthew Holworthy's bequest of more than 
twelve hundred pounds to Harvard College, two cen- 
turies since, is making glad the students of to-day ; 
they rejoice in it as in the light of some distant star, 
whose beams have been making their way to the earth 
through ages. It is possible for us to light up the dark 
lives of children in New Mexico in the next genera- 
tion, by gifts to Colorado College to-day. The Gospel 
light will go forth from our charities, so long as God's 
mercy to the earth endures. 1 

1 Colorado College is in need of funds to meet the current expenses, ana 
for permanent endowments. Money may be sent to J. M. Gordon, Treas- 
urer of the American College and Education Society, Boston, or John R. 
Hanna, Treasurer of the College, at Denver, Colorado. 

Money by bequest may be given in either of the forms following: — 

I give and bequeath to the Trustees of Colorado College the sum of , 

to be appropriated by the Trustees for the benefit of the college, in such manner 
as in their discretion they shall think will be most useful. 

Or, — / give and bequeath to the Trustees of Colorado College the sum of 



THE NEW WEST. 103 

Every Christian institution, whose fame and influ- 
ence now fills the world, had a definite beginning in 
the life of him who first put money into it. The found- 
ers of Oxford and Cambridge, of Harvard, Yale, Dart- 
mouth, Princeton, were men who could have thrown 
their silver into the sea, or they could have spent it in 
building more barn room for their goods. It would 
have been easy for them to have missed immortality. 
It is not difficult to neglect noble deeds. But those 
men are to be envied, who, having it in their power 
to gather wealth, have also the sagacity to seize rare 
opportunities for usefulness. The Venetian merchants 
of the thirteenth century stamped the image of Christ 
upon their coin. There are men in these days who 
do business by steam and by lightning, whose team 
horses I love to see upon the streets. I listen for the 
sound of their sweet bells, which make music unto the 
Lord. " The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness there- 
of," is written in their counting rooms. " See, my 
lord," said a general of the Society of Jesuits, " from 
this room — from this room I govern not only Paris, 
but China ; not only China, but the whole world, with- 
out any one knowing how it is managed." So, these 
Christian men rule no small part of the world from 
their counting rooms. Among their employees are 
men who organize Christian colleges. 

A man is manufacturing shoes, and he buys leather 
and hires men to do this and to do that. As one in- 
cident of his beneficent life, he hires a man to go West 
and found a college for him ; he pays skilled teachers 
to educate needy young men in the border country. 
He is shaping States as well as shoes ; and his work 

, to be safely invested by them, and called the Endowment Fund. 

The interest shall be applied to the payment of the salaries of teachers in Col- 
orado College as the Trustees shall deem expedient. 



104 THE NEW WEST. 

will go forward so long as rivers run to the sea. Here 
is a man buying and selling goods. He hires clerks 
to draw golden syrup, or to measure tape, and he also 
hires men to teach Greek and the English Bible in 
the New West. Does a man handle grain, and feed 
the horses of half a State ? Those horses pour money 
into uncounted channels for doing good to men. A 
Christian man studies the divine Word, and renews his 
consecration to God ; then goes to his counting room, 
and gives a hundred directions as to bags of meal, or 
the buying and selling of cotton stuff, or he orders a 
new lot of shoe pegs ; and he also directs in the estab- 
lishment of some Christian college, whose fame will 
perpetuate his influence and will never allow his name 
to die. A young man in thrifty business will give 
within a lifetime enough to found a professorship : 
or, if he is early called into a higher sphere of life, his 
name will be honorable as that of John Harvard, who 
dying at thirty, erected for himself a monument which 
will last so long as sun and moon endure ; and whose 
influence as a benefactor of his race will extend 
through immeasurable ages. 

Those were memorable words which still ring in my 
ears, — " The Lord either means to make me poor, or 
He will give me more money. But I propose to keep 
on giving in these hard times when givers are few." 
The man witnessed with joy his diminishing store of 
earthly goods, and was glad to open the eyes of the 
poor and to cheer the hearts of those who had long 
moaned in bondage. "I must give while I can, if the 
Lord is taking away my property," said one who 
trebled his donation to Christian work, when he learned 
of a heavy loss in his business. A very successful and 
clear minded man declares that he will give more than 
he can, since he wants to do business leaning hard on 



THE NEW WEST. 105 

Cod and leading a life of faith ; and he gives largely 
when ordinary business foresight would hardly justify 
it, affirming that he believes the Word of God, in which 
it is written and sealed that the Lord will prosper those 
who devote themselves to Him. 

A noble record comes to us from the English Univer- 
sities, in which scholarships are called to this day by 
the names of the working-men of London. Salters, 
Skinners, Leather Sellers, Haberdashers, Clothmakers, 
Merchant Tailors, Carpenters, Cordwainers, Cutlers, 
Goldsmiths, Grocers, and Fishmongers, — all aided in 
building up those schools of learning which are the 
glory of the world. 

" Never count any sacrifice too great for Christ," said 
Mary Lyon. Sarah Hosmer, of the Eliot Church in 
Lowell, supported a student in the Nestorian Seminary 
who became a preacher of Christ. Five times she paid 
fifty dollars, earning the money in a factory ; and 
sent five native pastors upon their errands of mercy. 
Living in an attic when she was more than sixty years 
old, she took in sewing ; and did not try to lay up cash, 
or live easily, as she might have done. She said that 
she wanted to furnish another minister of Christ for 
Nestoria ; and she did it. Living only for Christ, she 
plied, her needle for Him. The pride of dress or pride 
of purse in that whole city will have no more honora- 
ble record in the last day than her's, although she was 
obscure, and was never richly clad. " There is many 
a martyr spirit," said Judson, " at the kitchen fire, over 
the wash-tub, and in the plow field ; many obscure 
men and women make personal sacrifices, beside which 
ours will appear in the great day very small indeed." 

Whenever Colorado College becomes an honor to the 
Christian charity of the country, — and we believe that 
the decrees of God have given it a noble future, — there 



106 



THE NEW WEST. 



will be found engraven upon its Avails the names of a 
multitude of givers, the rich and the poor, who have 
added unspeakable dignity to their lives by founding 
this Christian enterprise, and thereby hastening the 
reign of Christ. Is it not worth the while to toil pa- 
tiently, to give largely, and to sacrifice for this work, 
during the first generation of the life of this College, to 
prepare it for its ages of service ? " If a rare oppor- 
tunity comes," says a sacred book of the far East, " let 
a man do that which is rarely done." 




College Building, as seen from the Railway. 
Vide page 72. 



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